Saturday 31 January 2015

Another foreign metal ringed Black-headed Gull

It has been a hectic month and I'm way behind on re-sighting reports, the blog and the 2014 annual report - never mind trying to catch some new birds!

Good news is that the annual report should be finished soon and I'll post it on here as soon as it is. In the meantime, here's a short piece on another foreign recovery from Northern Ireland.

Ring reading can become a bit of an addictive pass-time and while seeing a ringed bird which hasn't also been fitted with a colour-ring can be frustrating, it is all the more rewarding when you finally manage to get all the information.

A couple of our regular contributors, Gareth Platt and Chris Smith have, between them, put in a bit of time trying to get the details of a metal ringed bird which was been at Antrim since December.


Photo by Gareth Platt

Their efforts finally paid off when they managed to piece together the ring number and were able to report it to the appropriate ringing scheme in Sweden.


Photo by Gareth Platt

Gareth heard back this week that this bird had been ringed as a nestling at a colony at Axviks Hallar in southern Sweden on 17 June last year. Another example of a Scandinavian bird making its way to our shores to spend the winter.


Red - Ringing location
Blue - Re-sighting location

Excellent work by Chris and Gareth and many thanks to both of them for their efforts and for passing on the information. You can read all about their efforts by visiting Gareth's blog.

Saturday 10 January 2015

We did it!

I was delighted this week to receive an email confirming that our Kickstarter campaign had been successful in securing funding.

It was close but in the end a total of £352 was pledged - just £2 over the £350 target. Kickstarter is all or nothing, so if we had not managed to reach £350 then we would've received nothing.

This money will go towards purchasing a new batch of rings for 2015!

Many, many thanks to everyone who backed the project, in particular Jessica Borer, Stephen Burnside, Kendrew Colhoun, Amy Collette, Jules Jones, Pat Flowerday, Michael McLaughlin, Peter Mellor, Serina Patterson, Marc Ruddock and Fulton Somerville.

Photo by Debs R.