A Very Uncommon Gull

The biggest Common Gull colonies in the UK are in North East Scotland, and this summer we started colour ringing the species for the first time, mostly at a large inland colony at Tillypronie (below). So far we've had 5 local sightings along the coast this autumn, giving us an interesting, albeit predictable look at chick dispersal.

However, we've also had an extremely surprising sighting we definitely didn't see coming. A chick (2XKN) ringed at Tillypronie on 30th June was seen 983 miles away on 1st November, at Santa Cruz, La Coruña, Spain! A photo of the bird by Antonio Lopez Porto is below, complete with a Mediterranean Gull for proof of its location!

What makes this sighting so unusual is that it is the first Common Gull ringed in Scotland to ever be recorded in Spain, and only the second for the UK. The first record was from a chick ringed in 1957 in Kerry, Ireland, which was shot in Spain a few months later, amazingly only 7 miles away from where our bird was sighted! 

UK ringed Common Gulls recorded in other southern European countries are very rare, with only 1 recovery in Portugal, and 1 in Italy.

Hopefully continued colour ringing and sightings will help us discover more about the movements of Scottish Common Gulls. All our birds have orange rings with 2X followed by two letters. Please send any sightings to calumcambl@hotmail.co.uk.

Euan

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

New species for the group - ICELAND GULL!

The cold temperatures have continued in Aberdeen so our efforts to catch gulls have also continued. Yesterday lunchtime we'd just put the sausages on for sausage softies when Ewan noticed gulls on the neighbour's roof. A quick scan established the usual common gulls queueing up but also an Iceland gull sat above our catching area!

We quickly put out some cooked liver and bread and waited. Other gulls starting to come in but the Iceland didn't move! After what seemed like an age the bird swooped in and landed straight in the catching area. A quick check that the catch was safe and we pulled. The bird stayed perfectly caught along with 12 other gulls.

The gull was a 1st year bird and was a new species for the group. Previously there has been one Glaucous gull rung. It was a lot smaller in the hand than we'd expected, as can be seen below with a 1st year herring gull for comparison.

We think this was only the 10th Iceland Gull to be ringed in the UK so we're a little bit excited! Not bad for our little garden in an Aberdeen suburb! We're now up to 74 gulls this winter in the garden including British and Norwegian controls and now an Iceland gull. If the snow stays we'll be getting through the E's and G's this winter.

After ringing, weighing, photographing and measuring the bird we released it again and reset the net to see what else would turn up!

We've also just heard from Dave Anderson in Central Scotland that the Black-headed gull was ringed as a chick on Carron Reservoir near Stirling in late June this year, a total distance of 167km.

Ewan and Jenny

(Photos copyright of Ewan Weston and Jenny Lennon)

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

Another Norwegian Gull

Just days after we caught our fantastic white darvic common gull we caught another Norwegian ringed bird in our Westhill garden. This one wasn't colour-ringed so we wait to hear where its from.

Yes Ewan that makes two foreign controls in a week!



With the snow gone the Aberdeen gulls are back to patrolling the local schools for their lunch and aren't interested in bread in gardens any more.

Ewan & Jenny

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