Yellow legs and Black heads in Switzerland

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.

Wandering Caspian Gulls

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.