We recently received a partial ring-read of a Black-headed Gull in Switzerland which did look to be a BTO-ringed bird, so definitely one worth chasing up! A few emails later and a week after first seeing the bird at Morges, Franck Lehmans was able
to read the ring again and get the full number (EX70855); a bird ringed
as an adult at Pitsea Landfill Site in October 2012.
This is only the second report of a British-ringed Black-headed Gull in Switzerland, following a bird ringed as a chick in Essex in 1999 and seen in December that year. The map below shows all movements of Black-headed Gulls to/from Britain & Ireland, from the Online Ringing Report.
Franck has a bit of a track record finding North Thames Gull Group birds: in April/May 2014 he reported a Yellow-legged Gull (Orange YY5T) originally ringed at Rainham Tip in February 2014. This bird also has an interesting history, being seen just five days after ringing in France, before moving on to Switzerland.
Wanderings of Orange YY5T
To top the story, in the same week that Franck was watching the Pitsea Black-headed Gull in Switzerland, the Yellow-legged Gull he'd seen in the spring was back at Pitsea, photographed by Richard Bonser (check out his excellent blog here)!
Orange YY5T at Pitsea Landfill on 29th November (c) Richard Bonser
Many thanks to North Thames Gull Group for sending on the details of these birds and for letting us use the map from their excellent website.
This week North Thames Gull Group (with a few members of West Cornwall Ringing Group) are helping out Guernsey Gulls cannon-netting birds at Chouet Landfill on Guernsey. This is the fifth year the group has visited, and now ringed and colour-ringed 6,500 gulls, including almost 2,000 Lesser Black-backed Gulls. But as it's raining this morning, we thought we'd have a 'gull-off' between the groups. So below are three recent gull stories from the groups, with a fun poll at the bottom to vote on which is best: metal-ringing, colour-ringing or data-loggers.
North Thames Gull Group - GG61151
GG61151 was a first-winter Caspian Gull ringed at Pitsea Landfill, Essex, in 2007, at a time when Caspian Gulls were still just one of the 'yellow-legged' Herring Gulls. Without a colour ring it wasn't seen again until last week when it was found breeding on a rooftop in Minsk, Belarus. This is the first metal ring recovery of a British-ringed Caspian Gull abroad and shows that metal ringing can still be of immense value.
Guernsey Gulls - White 8Z0
Lesser Black-backed Gull White 8Z0 was originally ringed as a breeding adult on Sark in May 2009. After being seen locally over the summer it was then seen at Porto de Lagos Landfill in Portugal on 13th January 2010, then 12 days later it was back on Chouet Landfill on Guernsey and 10 days later on Guidel beach in France. Four days later it was back at Chouet Landfill, seen a further 21 times until the autumn.
It was then a regular at Chouet Landfill, but also back in Portugal in January 2011 and August 2012, but made an extra-long trip to Agadir, Morocco, December 2012.
West Cornwall Ringing Group et al - GPS loggers
The last week has also seen some high-resolution data coming from four GPS data-loggers being worn by urban-nesting Herring Gulls in St Ives, Cornwall. This project is run in conjunction with Finestripe Productions and University of Amsterdam, looking at the behaviour of these birds in a typical seaside town. Tracks from these four birds are fascinating and show how birds are making 90-minute trips out to sea or across the countryside, travelling at up to 40 miles per hour.
Below are the tracks over the last few days of all four birds and then also an animation of the wanderings of one bird, even showing it appearing to follow a ploughing tractor at one point.
doarama.com
So now cast your vote on your favourite marking technique: the 68p metal ring, the £1.60 metal/colour ring combo, or the £900 GPS data-logger...
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We don't have many recoveries of Caspian Gulls and the ones we do get are colour-ring sightings of foreign-ringed birds: most are from Poland (62), with smaller numbers from Ukraine (8) and singles from Germany and Switzerland. But we have only recently started seeing reports from abroad of British-ringed Caspian Gulls and these have all involved birds ringed by the North Thames Gull Group at either Pitsea Tip (Essex) or Rainham Tip (London). A young bird ringed in December 2011 spent most of spring 2012 on Texel (The Netherlands) and another young bird ringed in October 2011 was seen at Blaringham (France) and Neeltje Jans (The Netherlands) over the rest of that winter and then on and off until March 2013. But perhaps the most interesting is GG61181 (Orange PR6T); ringed as a second-winter bird at Pitsea Tip in February 2010.
GG61181 at Pitsea in February 2010
PR6T was then seen in Germany in December 2011 and this east-west migration of Caspian Gulls seems to be the norm. True to form PR6T was then recently seen again, but this time in The Netherlands, on Terschelling Island on 18th November.
GG61181 in The Netherlands last week
Once again this highlights the kind of information that can be gained from colour-ringing studies, all of which rely on the support of the wider birding community in looking for and reporting these birds. Full details for this bird (and further photos) can be found on the North Thames Gull Group website, where you can also report any NTGG birds seen. Thanks to Paul Roper from the group for passing on this story and for the photos of he bird in the hand, and to Jacob de Vries for the photo of the bird in The Netherlands.
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