Ythan Estuary Attracts Foreigners

The food rich mud and the safety of sandbanks on the Ythan Estuary near Newburgh provide resident birds with a perfect larder and resting area. This location is also attractive to migrating birds as they pass on their journey south. Other visitors arrive as part of their post breeding dispersal. Among the tourists to the Ythan during the autumn of 2013 have been a number of colour-ringed and “darviced” birds.

Viking gull invasion?

August saw a number of Scandinavian Black-headed Gulls arrive. These included:

Green J054 – ringed Breiavatnet, Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway on 16 July 2013 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

White J2CE – ringed Mølledammen, Time, Rogaland, Norway on 07 April 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

White J3UP - ringed Langvannet, Lørenskog, Akershus & Oslo, Norway on 08 April 2013 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

White J3U5 – ringed Vågen, Stavanger sentrum, Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway on 16 February 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 29 August 2013.

White VM47 – ringed in Denmark and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

Other northern travellers included:

Lapwing - White J34C – ringed Hemnes, sør, Karmøy, Rogaland, Norway on 12 June 2013 and seen on the Ythan on 29 August 2013.

 Sandering  G5RGRY – ringed at Zackenberg, Greenland on 20 June 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 06 Auguat 2013.

Sanderling Y6YWWW – ringed Griend west, Netherlands on 16  August 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

Dunlin White CST – ringed near Gdansk, Poland on 25 July 13 and seen on the Ythan on 11 November 2013.

The maps below illustrate the above bird movements to the Ythan.

Red = Lapwing, Yellow = Black-headed Gulls

Green = Sanderling, Orange = Dunlin

If you are lucky enough to see a colour-ringed bird please report it through http://blx1.bto.org/euring/lang/pages/colour_rings.jsp

MS 

Gull Update

We're now into the second year of the joint Grampian and Tay big gull project, and it's been another successful season. So far this year in Grampian we've colour ringed 280 fully grown gulls, mainly Herring but also the occasional Lesser and Greater-backed. We also ringed 120 chicks on the coast (including these Greater chicks below) 60 of which were colour ringed.



Tay Ringing Group colour ringed 70 gulls in Montrose. The St. Serf's island gull colony on Loch Leven was also colour ringed for the first time, with a total of 150 chicks, mainly Lesser Black-backed. So far we've had five St. Serfs birds seen in Portugal and two in Northwest Spain, one of which was photographed by Manuel Carregal (below). 



Also this year we started colour ringing Common and Black-headed Gulls for the first time. We've done 160 Common Gulls so far, mostly chicks in an upland colony, and have already got some interesting movements out of them, which will feature in a future blog post.

The Black headed Gull colony we regularly ring had poor breeding success, but we managed to ring a few chicks elsewhere, and also mist netted some fully grown birds in the Autumn.  Hopefully we'll get a snowy winter and catch lots more.  

• For big gulls with yellow rings, with the code the letter T followed by a colon and three numbers, please report to Euan Ferguson at e.ferguson17@hotmail.co.uk
• For big gulls with yellow rings, with the code the letter T followed by a colon and two numbers, then either the letter A or C, please report to Neil Mitchell at nfmitch2000@yahoo.co.uk
• For Common Gulls (orange rings) and Black headed Gulls (yellow rings) with the code 2X followed by two letters, please report to Calum Campbell at calumcambl@hotmail.co.uk

A big thank you to all the ringers and observers who have made these projects possible. Please continue looking out for colour rings. 

Euan

Colour-ringed sightings in the North East

In addition to the many colour-ringing projects run by GRG, birds of other ringing groups have also been noted in the North East. The following are details of some colour-ringed birds seen this year.

On 11 September a Pale-bellied Brent with two white darvics was seen within a small flock of five on the Ythan. This bird had been ringed at Strangford Loch, NI on 17/10/2005 and during its travels had been recorded in France, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This Brent was seen later in the month on the Solway Firth, presumably heading again for Ireland.

Colour-ringed Red Knot are not very common on the Ythan, so when one turned up on 17 August, it was interesting to receive news that it had been ringed at De Richel in The Netherlands way back on 27 July 2001. Also intriguing was the fact that this was the first sighting since ringing – perhaps giving hope for all those ringed birds you have never heard of since the ringing date.

A Black-tailed Godwit observed at the Ythan on 1 September was identified as being from Iceland. This Godwit was ringed at the nest on 1 July in NW Iceland.

On 18 September a Black-headed Gull was seen on the musselbeds of the Ythan. It had a white darvic and had been ringed in Rogaland, Norway on 8 April 2012 (see below map).

A Kittiwake at the mouth of the Ythan on 21 August had originally been ringed at Lowestoft Harbour on 27 June 2011. This is the second year when a similar bird has been seen in the same area.

Two Herring Gulls were seen on the cliffs north of the Bullers of Buchan. The first, on 13 March, had been ringed on 30 November 2007 at a landfill site near Scarborough, while the second, noted on 13 July originated from Pitsea landfill in Essex. It had been ringed on 27 March 2010 and was previously spotted in northern France (see below map).

Although many Forvie Sandwich Terns were fitted with rings and darvics and have dispersed, one “foreign” colour-ringed bird was seen among the “local” birds on 24 August and later at Cairbulg on 2 September. This young bird had been ringed in Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands on 19 June 2012.

MS

Great gulls!

The snow in Aberdeen has halted some of the waxwing chasing in the last week or two. Out in Westhill we've returned to our favourite garden ringing of gulls. A couple of miss-fires with a whoosh net has meant a change in tactics so we are now using a classic clap net as that seems to work better in the 20in of snow we have in our garden.
In the last few days we have caught over 60 gulls with another 10 by the young lads in Peterculter. We've been weighing all of the birds and they seem to be stable with about 10% of birds being significantly below weight.


Star birds have been a juv Black headed Gull British control and a Stavanger Common Gull - taking our tally to four for our garden in the two years we have lived here!

The most interesting bird was a common gull we rang yesterday morning in Westhill and was caught less than 2 hours later in Peterculter by Euan and Calum - a distance of 4.2km as the gull flies. This was the lightest bird we have caught in the garden so it was maybe that which made it travel further for food.

Gulls number have decreased in Westhill as birds have probably headed into town looking for food where there's less snow. But we will try again tomorrow with our reduced bread from Tesco!

Ewan and Jenny

BHG recovery

We've had a recovery of one of the Corgarff black headed gull chicks rung last summer. Unfortunately it was found in poor condition in the bad weather this winter. It had gone to Larkhall, Strathclyde though so is a good movement. Photos from Ann of the gull derby last June!

Gullalicious

It’s been a few months since Danny kindly set up the GRG blog, so we thought it was about time that something was posted on it!



With the amazing snowfall we have had it has given us the opportunity to do some winter gull ringing – a GRG speciality. So far we have had reasonable success and a few failures, mainly due to the depth of snow. A total of 9 herring gulls, 5 black-headed gulls, 80 common gulls and 1 rook have been caught. Amongst these there have been a small number of interesting recoveries, some of which we have already found out ringing details.





The first ringing details we received were of a GRG bird that was ringed at Culterty field station in Newburgh by Paul Doyle on 30/6/1995 as a chick and captured on 2/1/2010 in the park outside Skitts’ house in Newburgh with two other birds. Nice to see an older bird and one that was reared in the region too.



Over in Westhill we have had the lion’s share of the success with 5 Herring gulls, 2 black-headed gulls, 78 common gulls and a rook caught in our wee garden with Tesco reduced counter bread. This has included an old GRG bird and a nice Norwegian ringed and colour-ringed bird. The GRG bird was ringed at the Don mouth on 25/2/2001. We were able to get the history of the Norwegian bird within a few hours on a Norwegian colour ringing website. The bird had been ringed as an adult male in Tromso on 23/4/2004, was sighted twice that June at the same site, again in June 2005, July 2007 and then nothing until it turned up in a catch of 27 gulls in the garden on 6/1/2010. The distance from Tromso to Westhill is 1727km and it was 2084 days since it was originally ringed!

Ewan & Jenny