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 

A Great Great Black-Backed Gull

The last post about colour ringed gulls on this blog was about a rare movement, a Common Gull chick seen in North West Spain. We have now had another unusual movement to Spain from one of our gull chicks. Not only was it ringed on the same day, but it has been sighted only 7 miles away from our Common Gull! This time however it is a Great Black-backed Gull.

On the 30th June 2012, after a morning’s ringing of 180 Common Gull chicks at Tillypronie, we headed to the coast, to Whinnyfold seabird colony. There we ringed 90 gull chicks on a tidal stack (above). Most of the chicks were Herring Gulls, but we also colour ringed 3 Great Black-backed Gulls (below), the first and only chicks of this species to be ringed in our project.

We heard no reports from these birds until 13th January 2013, when T:013 was sighted at Ares Beach, A Coruña, Spain, 1005 miles away from where it was born. A photograph by the observer Antonio Gutierrez is below. The bird was seen at the beach again two days later. What makes this sighting interesting is that very few British ringed Great Black-backed Gulls have been reported in Southern Europe. According to BTO online reports only 3 individuals have previously been recorded in Spain, and 1 in Portugal, although this may not take into account all colour ring sightings. The majority of birds found abroad are in Scandinavian countries.

Thank you very much to Antonio for reporting this sighting. You can see more photographs of T:013 and other colour ringed gulls in North West Spain on his blog -  http://gaviotasyanillas.blogspot.co.uk/.

We have only ringed 16 Great Black-backed Gulls so far in this project. Despite this small number we have had 3 other birds, all from the same catch, seen abroad; 1 in Germany and 2 in Denmark. Such a high return rate from so few birds really demonstrates the value of colour rings on this species.

The majority of gulls we ring in this project are Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls. So far this winter we have had lots of interesting sightings from across Europe and beyond, which will be the subject of the next gull post.

Euan

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

Greater Hat-trick

On boxing day last year, me and Ewan did what most people do, and headed up to Peterhead, with a car full of bread and turkey scraps, to catch Gulls. Unfortunately our net did not fire as intended, and we only managed to catch three first winter Greater Black-backed Gulls.

However, our attempt was definitely worth the effort, as we soon discovered that T:007 (above) was sighted in St. Peter-Ording, Germany, only four days after ringing. It doesn't appear to have left since, as we've had sightings throughout the year in the same location from multiple observers, the most recent one being in mid-August.

Later in the year we got a report that another bird of the catch, T:006, had been seen in Hirtshals, Denmark on 26th June!  A photograph by the observer, Lars Pederson is below.

Amazingly that was not all!  Last month a sighting came through from the remaining gull of the catch, T:005, in Hanstholm, Denmark on 13th May.

So out of a catch of three birds, we've had a 100% foreign resighting rate! Not a bad boxing day after all! It really shows the benefits of colour rings on these species. All the locations the birds have been seen in are coastal harbour towns, so presumably the gulls have just latched onto and followed boats across the North Sea.

I will put an update up sometime soon about our Gull ringing this year.

Euan

Recent Gull Sightings

The frustratingly mild winter we've has this year has meant that gulls haven't been very hungry, making catching them quite challenging. However, some interesting sightings have come from the birds we've managed to ring. We had good numbers of northern Argentatus Herring Gulls about at the beginning of the year. Distinctively pale plumaged first winter Herring Gull T:610 (above), which was ringed at Peterhead Harbour on 8th January, confirmed its Scandinavian roots when it was seen and photographed by Arnt Kvinnesland at Ferkingstad, Karmoy, Norway (below) on the 14th March.

The past few months we've also had lots of sightings from the Herring Gulls we ringed during the summer. Most of these have been around North East Scotland, but we've have had several birds travel further south, mostly to England, and recently one to Ouddorp in the Netherlands. A map of our long distance Herring Gull movements is below. We are now down to a 1 in 4 sighting

rate overall.

Glaucous Gull T:193, ringed last August at the Ugie Estuary, Peterhead (below with a satisfied Calum) which was then seen at Boldon Flats, Durham in Decemeber, has been sighted again several times across England.

It was seen at Newburn Sewer, Seaton Carew on 15th January, and then it went down to Cotham Landfill Site, Nottinghamshire for a couple of weeks from the 18th February (photographed below by Nick Crouch). It was next seen for a few days at Ogston Reservoir, Derbyshire from the 8th March. It then went north again, and was at Longnewton Reservoir, Cleveland on the 24th and 25th March.

It will be interesting to to see where it turns up next. Please look out for it and any other colour ringed gulls, send sightings to e.ferguson17@hotmail.co.uk. All our gulls have yellow rings with the letter T followed by a colon and three numbers.

A big thank you to all observers and photographers.

Euan

Gulls on the move

T:605, Duthie Park (Ewan Weston)

We are now getting some interesting sightings from the gulls we've been colour ringing since the summer. Most of our sightings have been from Herring Gulls around Aberdeenshire, however some have gone further afield. We've had two, both ringed on the same day, seen in England, one at Greatham Creek, Teesside and one at North Hykeham, Lincolnshire. Going further south was Herring Gull T:228, ringed at Torry in August and seen in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pas-de-Calais, France four months later. This is only the second Grampian ringed Herring Gull recorded in France, the previous had been ringed as a chick.

T:209, Peterhead (Chris Gibbins)

The bird that has travelled the greatest distance so far is Lesser Black-backed Gull, T:027, ringed at the end of June in the Asda car park beside Aberdeen beach. It was caught by hand after it was chased inside a shopping trolley!

It was then sighted in September at El Puerto de Santa Maria in the south of Spain. It was resighted several times into November. We only colour ringed seven Lesser Black-backed Gulls this summer, so we were very pleased to get such a good movement out of one of them.

T:027, El Puerto de Santa Maria (Rafa Garcia)

Similarly, we have also only colour ringed seven Great Black-backed Gulls so far, yet we've still had one venture abroad! T:007 was ringed on boxing day at Peterhead Harbour, and seen four days later in St. Peter Ording, Germany!

A nice surprise this summer was managing to colour ring a Glaucous Gull at the Ugie Estuary, Peterhead on the 3rd August. We heard nothing at all about this birds whereabouts until it was seen at Boldon Flats, Durham on 23rd December. Few Glaucous Gulls have been ringed in the UK, so it will be interesting to see where this bird turns up next.

Thank you to all observers and photographers. Please check all Gulls you see for colour rings, all our rings are yellow with the letter T followed by a colon and three numbers.

Euan

Last Gulls of the Summer

We've reached the end of summer and the end of our gull darvics. The 250th was put on a Lesser Black-backed Gull today, after a whoosh net catch on Aberdeen beach. Time to order some new rings!

Most of the birds ringed over the summer have been Herring Gulls, but seven Lesser Black-backed Gull, two Greater Black-backed Gulls and a Glaucous Gull have also been colour ringed. The Glaucous is the first to be ringed in the UK since 2002, with only 60 birds having ever been ringed.

The first Greater Black-backed Gull (above) we colour ringed this year at Fraserburgh was seen 45 miles away at Lossiemouth 4 days later. Having only ringed two Greaters so far that's a good resighting rate! We intend to catch more this autumn at the harbours up north.

Several birds we caught had already been metal ringed. The oldest was ringed as a chick at Aberdeen harbour in 1997. Many gulls are now being resighted around the city. The photo below shows two juveniles we'd ringed at different sites standing right next to each other. Amazingly we'd only ringed three juveniles at that stage! From our resightings we are seeing that breeding birds don't necessarily feed near the nest site, with birds ringed in our gardens in the suburbs seen on rooftops 8 miles away in the city centre. Hopefully more resightings will help us understand more about the movements and population of Aberdeens gulls.

Please check all gulls you see for colour rings.

Euan 

100th Gull Colour Ringed

We have been catching large gulls this summer around Aberdeen for a new colour ringing project, and caught our 100th bird today. This particular bird had all ready been metal ringed, by myself last summer. Like the majority of the birds we've ringed it was an adult Herring Gull. We have also ringed four adult Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and are now starting to catch this years juveniles as they come off the roofs. Most of the gulls have been caught by hand around the city, although some have also been clap netted in our gardens. Gulls are easisest to catch at this time of year, with juveniles fully grown yet still reliant on their parents for food, meaning adult gulls are more confident and reckless than usual. Hopefully we will ring a lot more before summer is over. Please check the gulls you see around Aberdeen for rings.

Euan

Colour Ringing Gulls

We have started a new colour ringing project: Herring Gulls (and Lesser and Greater Black-backed Gulls if we can get our hands on them). "The North East Scotland Gull project" as I've just decided to call it will see us putting colour rings on any large gull we catch in the Grampian and Tay area, with Ben Herschell from Tay Ringing Group colour ringing gulls in and around Montrose.
   We ringed our first birds today, caught by hand at a legendary site we refer to as "the magic fence." Hopefully they will be the first of many this summer, as we are soon getting to the period when gulls are easy to catch. They lose all caution and common sense when they have chicks, as they desperately try to secure Asda smart price bread for them

Catching at the Magic Fence - thanks to Keith Barker for sending us this photo Another bird caught later in the Burger King car park!

Please look out for our gulls, all have a yellow ring on the left leg, with the letter T followed by a colon and three numbers.
Euan, Calum and Raymondo

GBB Gull ringing

What do you do with 17 loaves of bread, a turkey carcass, two mince rounds, a pizza and a whole salmon that Raymond has had since November? Thats right - an expedition to catch gulls in the harbours of the North-east!

Despite a distinct reduction in the number of herring gulls in the harbours due to the lack of fishing boats coming in over the festive period, we tried a few tried and tested catching methods as well as a bit of improvisation. The result was 11 GBB gulls and 3 herring gulls.

As a side effect though, Euan managed to make us think we should carry a first aid kit with us when out ringing and Raymond had to sit in a car on his own as he was designated stinky salmon toucher.