Wednesday 4 November 2015

An interesting gull

Not much to report recently and in fact not much time on patch as half term and foggy weather have limited things a bit.

I did have an interesting gull recently though.  I don't report it much on here, but there are often plenty of gulls loafing about on the spit which makes the finding and reading of colour rings fairly easy compared with other sites where the birds are either further away or sitting in water.  Anyway, last week I found a 1cy gull in the twilight of the 28th October.  It looked to me, in the cursory glance that I gave it, to be a Herring Gull and it was sporting a green ring on its right tibia with the letters SD and a black ring on its left tibia.  I've only seen gulls ringed in this way from Dutch schemes, as this proved to be, but when I got the history back, the ringer asked if I had any photos, as this was an interesting bird from mixed parents, argentatus x michahellis.  Unfortunately, I hadn't, but now that I know it is a hybrid I would love to be able to grill it a bit better to see if there are mich traits in it that I had overlooked.  It was seen again at the weekend, but not by me, so maybe it is hanging around.

I also had a returning Common Gull on Monday, ringed in Germany, red AW22.  I hardly ever see ringed Common Gulls even though we get thousands here in the Spring, so it was nice to see him again.

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