Silly birdy!

I had hoped to be writing about all the gulls I had ringed during the Christmas holidays, but a combination of illness and the stormy weather have resulted in me only getting out for the first time this afternoon.

I took my wee boy, who has just turned two on Christmas Eve, and we headed off to meet Kevin at the seafront in Carrickfergus. We had only arrived and I managed to catch an adult female almost immediately and the reaction from Ruben was brilliant, when he said, "Silly birdy!" while laughing....out of the mouths of babes, eh?!

After a while, Ru got a bit agitated and we had to go for a walk to see the big boats! It gave us an opportunity to check for colour-rings and we recorded 2ADD and 2ADB, as well as a bird with a foreign metal ring. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the code on the ring, but I will try again later in the week.

When we got back to the car we gave catching another go and were rewarded with an adult male.

These two birds have taken the total of birds ringed since starting the study to 149...I'm going to head out tomorrow in the hope of taking that total to 150 before the end of the year!

Black-headed Gull - White J5P9

Co-ordinated by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) monitors waterbirds throughout the UK.

Carried out on the same weekend once a month right across the country, these counts allow the BTO to identify population sizes, determine trends in numbers and distribution of particular species and to identify important sites for waterbirds.

Yesterday, while I was out counting my section of Belfast Lough, I noticed a small flock of black-headed gulls roosting near the old landfill site on Dargan Road. Scanning through them, checking for colour-rings, I was delighted to find one of them sporting a white ring with J5P9 engraved on it.

Checking the brilliant cr-birding website, I realised that this was another Norwegian ringed bird, following on from Stephen and Cameron's sightings earlier this winter (see here and here).

Entering the details on the Norwegian colour-ringing website, I got an instance response to tell me that this bird had been ringed in Oslo in April 2011.

Since then, it has been recorded in Cumbria (August 2011), back in Norway (July 2012 and April 2013) and Stranraer (November 2013), before I saw it yesterday in Belfast.

Red - Ringed in Oslo, April 2011
Yellow - Recorded in Cumbria, August 2011
Light blue - Seen back in Norway, July 2012 & April 2013
Green - Recorded at Stranraer, November 2013
Blue - Recorded at Belfast, December 2013

Black-headed Gulls talk at NIOC, 05.12.13

I'm giving another talk on our study in Northern Ireland, this Wednesday to the Northern Ireland Ornithologists' Club.

Starting at 7.30pm, the talk will be held in the Ulster Museum, Belfast and it is open to everyone, although a small charge applies.

For more information visit the NIOC website: http://www.nioc.co.uk/ (if even just to check out the cracking photo of an adult Med Gull in summer plumage!).

One weekend / two conferences!

Last weekend I, along with many others, headed to Cork for the 6th Irish Ornithological Research Conference, hosted by the School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences at UCC.

On our journey down, we stopped off at Portmarnock in north Dublin to assist the Irish Brent Goose Research Group (IBGRG) with a catch.

Ireland hosts the vast majority of the world population of Light-bellied Brent Geese (c.30,000-40,000) and the work of the IBGRG has resulted in almost 4000 geese being caught and colour-ringed since 2001. They have recorded over 130,000 re-sightings, which makes my 500+ re-sightings seem slightly insignificant!!

I can't believe this blog is over a year old and I haven't mentioned the IBGRG before - sorry, guys!

This was my first experience of cannon-netting and unfortunately, a temperamental fuse resulted in only six of the 120 or so geese in the catching zone being caught. *Insert expletives here*

It was fascinating and impressive to watch the professional setup the guys had to process the birds, taking all sorts of biometrics and, of course, colour-ringing them.

You can keep up to date by following the IBGRG blog, here.

 

Photo by Niall Harmey

 

We also caught two Black-headed Gulls which Niall Tierney from Birdwatch Ireland duly ringed. Sadly, as the birds weren't caught in Northern Ireland, I couldn't fit them with colour-rings, but it was the first time Niall had ringed one, so hopefully he might think about starting his own project!

Photo by Niall Harmey

Photo by Niall Harmey

Measuring head & bill to determine sex
Photo by Niall Harmey

Saturday saw the conference start bright and early at 09.30 and was a superb series of talks by researchers and academics from across Ireland, highlighting the amount of fantastic work being conducted here. Speakers covered a wide range of topics, including seabirds, raptors, geese, monitoring and the human impact on birds.

The keynote speaker was Stephen Votier from University of Exeter who has a passion for seabirds and has extensively studied my favourite species, the Gannet. The work which he has been involved with has included capturing some absolutely amazing footage from a back-mounted camera, fitted to a Gannet, which you might've seen on the BBC earlier this month.

As well as the talks, there were also around 20 poster presentations, including one on my Black-headed Gull study in Northern Ireland.

The following morning, the Irish Ringers' Conference was held, and was well attended with over 50 people filling the room.

Talks included one by Niall from Birdwatch Ireland on the Dublin Bay Birds Project, which will see birds, primarily waders, fitted with colour-rings to monitor their movements within Dublin Bay and further afield to establish how the are influenced by disturbance. You can follow their blog here.

There was also a presentation on Mediterranean Gulls in Dublin by Sean Kingston, who has been monitoring the ever growing population. Sean is also catching birds and fitting them with colour-rings to establish movements, longevity, etc. similar to my Black-headed Gull study in Northern Ireland.

It was fantastic to meet so many enthusiastic people and we shouldn't wait another five years before holding another Irish Ringers' Conference!

A long, tiring but ultimately, brilliant, weekend.

Thanks to Niall for letting me use his photos, to the IBGRG for and John O'Halloran et al at UCC and Alan Lauder for organising two brilliant conferences.