A bird found alive and well on a Scottish island, aged 45, is the oldest ever recorded in Britain, experts have confirmed. A volunteer bird ringer tagged the Fulmar gull as a fledgling in the Orkney Islands in 1975 - and it was spotted again in June last year on an uninhabited Scottish island.
The ring showed it had reached the ripe age of 45 years, nine months and 12 days. Tom Stewart, a spokesperson for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) confirmed it was among the oldest fulmars ever recorded in Britain.
He said: "We often can't check their rings because we don't know where the bodies are, so we rarely know how long they lived for. But this is the longest time that has elapsed between a Fulmar being ringed and being re-sighted.
