Black-headed Gull - 6431692

As you can see, the blog has had a bit of a "face-lift" and although it has been a couple of weeks since the last update, we have been busy recording and re-sighting gulls across the country.

Many birds have made their way back from their breeding grounds in continental Europe to spend the winter months here and last week, Gary recorded a Swedish ringed bird at Glenarm on the Antrim Coast.

Photo by Gary Platt

The bird, which had a metal ring, had been ringed as a chick at Lake Takern on 4th June 2011, which is just over 1,300km north-west as the crow flies but, of course, we're dealing with gulls and although in the absence of tracking data, we cannot tell for certain, it is much more likely that the bird took a longer route.

Blue - Lake Takern, ringing location (4 June 2011)
Orange - Glenarm, re-sighting location (14 September 2016)

This isn't the first Swedish Black-headed Gull we've recorded here, with a couple of reports since we began our project almost four years ago (see here and here).

Many thanks to Gary for passing on the information and all of his hard work and efforts in re-sighting and reporting ringed birds.