Monday 23 January 2012

Colour ringed Black-headed Gulls at Alnwickhill

I have been searching for readable colour rings on gulls at Alnwickhill for over a year. In that time I have only managed a single read - a Herring Gull in November 2010 (ringed in Gloucestershire). Other than that I have seen unreadable Herring Gulls and and some partially read Norwegian Common Gulls. Yesterday I had already had a typical encounter with a white-ringed (Norwegian?) Black-headed Gull on the Aberlady shore - it was too flighty and distant for its code to be read.

It was with a little shock then later at Alnwickhill that I noted that one of the nearest Black-headed Gulls was white colour ringed. As I set up my scope I was confused to see that the ring had suddenly changed both leg and colour! Wow, two colour-ringed Black-headed Gulls...




So, it turns out that the white-ringed JHR4 (on the right of the pictures) was ringed in Oslo, Norway, in March 2011 and the blue-ringed 2C13 (on the left) was ringed at Killington in Cumbria in June of the same year. Interesting that they should both be spending their time in winter in Edinburgh and a great surprise for me to find both at the same time.

2 comments:

Stuart said...

You keep coming up with the goods! Pity about the redevelopment of the site.
Have not had a ring for a while - white J1J4 is another Norwegian seen once by me at Esk and black P834 from the Baltic is seen fairly regularly there.
Well done on the rapid year list progress!

Morg said...

Thanks Stuart - I have been lucky in having an unusually large amount of time available the last couple of weekends...

Thought I had another Water Rail today walking home through the Hermitage - but inconclusive - didn't quite manage to exclude Moorhen (seen both at this spot before). Maybe nail it at the w/e.

Hope to see you again soon - maybe out and about?... Need some advice on getting this loose focus wheel sorted on my scope so might pop into the shop soon.

Geoff