Black-headed Gull - EW85348

If you've been following the blog for a while now, you might remember I reported a metal ringed Black-headed Gull which I saw at Castlewellan Lake back in January (see here).

I heard back from the BTO and it turns out that this bird was ringed in Glen Esk in Angus by a member of the Tay Ringing Group on 31 May 2011.

Red - Glen Esk, Angus
Blue - Castlewellan Lake, Co. Down

Personally, this is quite exciting for me as when I lived in Scotland, Glen Esk was one of my stomping grounds and as a ringer with Tay Ringing Group I helped Ben Herschell colour-ring Herring Gulls as part of the NE Scotland Project, which has eventually led to this project!

It's strange, as I was back in Scotland last weekend and spent a couple of hours with Ben looking for colour-ringed gulls in Arbroath and, for some reason, I was telling him about this exact bird!

 

 

 

According to the ringing report I received, this is a movement of 354km SW and the time between ringing and re-sighting was 595 days.

A ton of re-sightings!

We reached another milestone this week, when Keith Stevens got in touch to report several sightings of colour-ringed birds, taking the number of re-sightings to over 100 - 109 to be exact!

Keith managed to get some photographs of the birds he saw, I particularly like this shot of 2ABL!


Photo by Keith Stevens

This photo of 2AAR is also worth checking out when you compare it to a photo I took of the same bird on 23 January.

Breeding plumage, March 2013
Photo by Keith Stevens

Winter plumage, Jan 2013

Many thanks to Keith for taking the time to report his sightings and for allowing us to use his photos.

Cheeky gull

A friend posted this photo on my Facebook page which I think answers the question a lot of people ask, "How do you manage to catch the gulls by hand?"

It's easy, they volunteer themselves!

Photo by Hayley Sherwin

That's why Mum goes to....

My ringing trainer, Neville, got in touch last week to say he'd been feeding the ducks with his grand-daughter, Lily and had seen some of "my" gulls.

You can clearly see the differences in the plumage and colour of the bill and legs between the adult, 2ABF and a juvenile 2AAF here:

Photo by Neville McKee

Photo by Neville McKee

The Polish-ringed bird, originally from Lithuania, T35J is also still around:

Photo by Neville McKee

The most exciting record which Neville got was a metal-ringed bird, on which he could make out the word, "Iceland".

Photo by Neville McKee

Unfortunately he was unable to get the ring number before the bird flew off - bloody birds!