German ringed Black-headed Gulls

I walked across the road to Orrell Water Park this afternoon to see if the regular German ringed Black-headed Gull had returned for a 6th winter. There were about 50 Black-headed Gulls waiting on the edge of the lake by the car park so I threw them some bread to bring them closer and I soon spotted one with a ring. I managed to get some photographs of it in the melee of feeding gulls and on checking them on the back of the camera I could see it was regular wintering bird that has been recorded more than 60 times over the last 5 winters.

IA141745    Black-headed Gull (ringed as an adult male)

Ringed              29/04/2012  Bohmke und Werder, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.

Photographed   02/10/2017 Orrell Water Park, Orrell, Greater Manchester. 1102 km W.

I soon noticed there was another ringed Black-headed Gull but it kept weaving between the other gulls and was a bit more difficult to photograph. I must have taken around 100 photographs before I thought I had secured the full ring number and address on the ring. On returning home I reviewed the photos on the laptop and was able to work out the full ring number and it was a German ring from the Heligoland ringing scheme (ring address Helgoland, Germania).

I have submitted the details of the ring number to BTO and hopefully I will get the ringing information back fairly quickly but it can take several months when a foreign ringing scheme is involved. When I do get the details back I will post them on the blog.

A dry day for a change

Weather wise it has been another miserable week. Yesterday was a complete washout so a dry day with sunshine was very welcome to say the least. It was too windy for any mist-netting but it was just nice to see some blue sky for a change.



Blue sky and some Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

I was having a cup of coffee when I noticed a male Blackcap on one of the fat feeders in the front garden. I assumed it was the bird I had ringed 10 days ago but when I got my bins on it I could see it wasn’t ringed. Blackcaps can be quite acrobatic on feeders and this bird was no exception.

 

Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla)

Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla)

A few coffees later I walked over the road to Orrell Water Park to check out the Black-headed Gulls for rings. About 100 gulls were present but only one was wearing a ring and that was the German ringed bird that I have photographed several times since late October.



German ringed Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus)



Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus)
I can't resist taking the odd flight shot.

I needed to do some Christmas errands in the afternoon and also top up the feeders at Haigh so I decided to call in at Three Sisters on route to check out the Black-headed Gulls there. There were about 120 gulls on the small lake and I soon spotted a bird with a metal ring when I started to feed them. I would have got the number quite quickly but for other people feeding the birds in the water rather than on the bank. Anyway around 50 shots and a loaf later I had the full number and address photographed. It was a Swedish ringed bird.

 

Swedish ringed Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus)



Swedish ringed Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus). It is not always easy to get shots all round the ring especially on a windy day when birds birds face the wind most of the time,