Gulls and Rings

On Tuesday 7th of December, prior to visiting the patch, I popped to the new Hartlebury landfill site. The landfill site is literally a mile or so down the road from the edge of my patch at the bottom of Witch Lane. It is in an area that I have watched for a couple of years and prior to being a landfill it was used for sand extraction. Past species recorded there include Green Sandpiper and Turtle Dove. I may at some point extend the southern boundary of my patch to include said area.

Anyway, back to the 7th. When they are not feeding on the landfill, a large flock of up to 500 Gulls will sit in the opposite or adjacent fields. On scanning through the gulls I recorded c.300 Black-headed Gulls, c.80 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, c.40 Herring Gulls and an adult Yellow-legged Gull.

I noted that one of the Lesser Black-backed Gulls was colour ringed (see photo at bottom of this entry). The ring was black with a yellow 4 digit alpha numeric code that read T2HC. I checked out the ring details on the "European Colour - Ring Birding" website and it appeared that this colour ring and prefix was used in a project up at Tarnbrook Fell, Forest of Bowland. I emailed the projects coordinator and have since received a email back confirming that it was indeed a Tarnbrook bird.

The Lesser Black-backed was ringed as a 30 day old juvenile at the colony on Tarnbrook Fell (SD6258) on 11.07.1998. The sightings history of the bird is as follows:

11/07/98 Tarnbrook Fell, Lancashire
22/11/02 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 4 yrs 134days)
27/11/02 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 4 yrs 139days)
17/12/02 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 4 yrs 159days)
24/12/02 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 4 yrs 166days)
31/12/02 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 4 yrs 173days)
15/01/04 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 5 yrs 188days)
29/01/04 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 5 yrs 202days)
01/11/04 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 113days)
03/12/04 WEL Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 145days)
20/12/04 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 162days)
13/01/05 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 186days)
18/01/05 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 191days)
24/01/05 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 197days)
08/02/05 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 212days)
14/02/05 SAN Gloucester landfill, Gloucestershire (242 km, S, 6 yrs 218days)
07/12/10 JKN Hartlebury, Worcestershire (188 km, S, 12 yrs 149days)

I would like to thank the NW Gull Project's coordinator David Sowter for his swift reply and providing me with this information. To report a colour ringed bird either go to http://www.cr-birding.be/ or http://www.euring.org/

Lesser Black-backed Gull T2HC - Hartlebury, 7th Dec 2010:
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4 comments:

  1. Warren Baker19 December 2010 at 09:25

    Fantastic to see that the LBB has survived for so long Jase. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jason K19 December 2010 at 10:57

    Yes it is good Warren. I wonder where it spent the six years between being in Gloucestershire to me seeing it in North Worcestershire?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bob Bushell19 December 2010 at 12:54

    It's a pretty good site in Gloucester if you get hungry.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jason K20 December 2010 at 02:32

    ha...is that the voice of experience Bob?

    ReplyDelete

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