Rookie mistake!

During last week, I accompanied Matthew Tickner of the RSPB on another visit to Blue Circle Island in Larne Lough. We were heading out to check for Roseate Tern chicks as, in return for being given permission to ring gulls on the reserve, I am the designated ringer for any Rosey Terns on the islands in Larne Lough. Not a bad compromise, eh?!

Unsurprisingly, things are starting to quieten down as the breeding season edges towards an end. The number of Black-headed Gulls has dropped with only a couple of hundred birds hanging around. There were plenty of large young standing around on the rock armour which surrounds the man-made island.

As we approached the island, we heard the unmistakable "kriack" of an adult Roseate Tern, so upon landing we quickly got to work checking nest boxes. Unfortunately we didn't locate and chicks, but we'll head out in a week or so for another check.

I took advantage of being on the island and had a quick walk around and ringing a couple of late black-headed gull chicks.

I also managed to catch a young Mediterranean Gull and, knowing that Sean Kingston had sent me some of his Med Gull colour-rings up from Dublin, I was looking forward to telling him he had another bird to add to his database. Imagine my disappointment when I checked my bag and realised I'd left the colour-rings at home! Doh!
 

A sheepish email apology was swiftly dispatched, sorry Sean!

One of the adult Med Gulls which breed on Blue Circle Island

 

Common Gull ringing - and other unmentionables!

On Friday afternoon, I accompanied Shane Wolsey on our annual expedition to Big Copeland Island to colour-ring Common Gulls as part of his on going study (see here and here).

The weather was idyllic and we got to work catching large Common Gull chicks in one of the sub-colonies on the island.

Also with us were Ron Price and Aoibheann Canavan, a Behavioural Ecology student who, how do I put this? Let's just say her study is different!

Ron acting as both scribe & chief gull holder!

As part of Aoibheann's work, she is looking at the bacteria present in the "wrong" end of the bird, which required taking swabs from the birds' cloaca. I told you it was different!

It's great to see more people getting involved with studying these fascinating birds.

During our ringing activities we discovered several birds which appeared to have infections in one or both of their feet, which prevented a colour-ring being fitted. The infections ranged from a loss of skin to growths. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any suggestions over the cause.

You can follow Aoibheann on Twitter at @acanavan1

Third (and final) BHG study colony visited

Last Sunday morning, a small team of us headed out to Copeland Bird Observatory to concentrate on ringing Black-headed and Common Gulls.

Last year, we didn't ring the small gulls in the colony on CBO (we did ring on Mew Island though - see here) as the terns and gulls were all mixed together and we didn't want to cause any unnecessary disturbance. This year, however, they're a bit more segregated which gave us and opportunity to ring.

To keep disturbance to a minimum though, we collected small numbers of gulls up and took them to one side and ringed them in one of the many gullies on the island.

It seems we were slightly too late for the Black-headed Gulls as many young present were already on the wing and in the end I was happy to add 19 new colour-ringed birds to the tally for 2014.

The weather was superb and we got great views north towards County Antrim (I can see my house...almost!) and eastwards over Mew Island.

There is currently work on-going to update the lighthouse on Mew Island. It will soon loose the traditional flash, which has been a feature of the County Down seascape since 1884, to be replaced by a simple flashing LED.

Many thanks to Niall Waterman and Wes Smyth for some of the photos. Blogger won't let me label them for some reason!

Visit to second study colony - WWT Castle Espie

It's been a hectic couple of weeks - well it is the middle of the breeding (aka silly) season, isn't it?!

The weather has been fantastic, but the rain today has given me time to recover and finally get round to updating the blog.

There are plenty of posts to come up over the next while, including a couple of projects involving much bigger, feistier birds than Black-headed Gulls!

Back to the black-heads, however....

Last week, Eimear Rooney and I joined Kerry and Pete from WWT to colour-ring some of the chicks in their colony at Castle Espie.

The great thing about the colony at Castle Espie is that it is spread out across the site, so we can access sections of the colony without causing any disturbance to the other areas. The not-so-great thing about the colony is that the birds choose to nest amongst thistles and nettles!

As appears to be the way of things this season, the birds were all over the place, with large chicks on the verge of fledging, right back to pairs still on eggs or just hatching (apologies about the blurry quality of the second photo!).

The fantastic facilities available at the site meant we could ring the birds away from the colony, before returning them to the same section a short time later.

In the end we ringed 75 chicks, of which 60 were also fitted with a colour-ring. This is much better than last year when, due to not visiting until mid-July, we only managed to ring six birds (see here).

Many thanks to WWT for permission to ring and especially to Kerry, Pete and Eimear for their help.

The other brilliant thing about ringing at a site like Castle Espie is that afterwards, you can enjoy a coffee and admire the wildfowl collection!