Old Friends and New

I had a bit of a "gull tour" today, visiting a couple of well known sites to see if I could catch up with some ringed Black-headed Gulls that I recorded earlier in the year (see here). As the title of this post hints, I managed to find some, but also added some new "friends" to expanding list.

First stop this morning was Rufford Country Park, in Nottinghamshire. Two of the five gulls I found two weeks ago were still around; namely EUM3, a Dutch-ringed bird and V77K, a Danish-ringed bird. Both birds were still on the lake coming to bread.

The next stop was Alvaston Park in Derby, where Jayne and I had 4 ringed gulls in November 2018 (see here). Although I only found one of these, VA4073, a Danish-ringed bird, I did find a new adult bird with the metal ring number S_ _ _ _ 70. As you can see, I only managed to get 3 of the 7 digits, so I can't say where this one came from...yet!

Whilst at Alvaston I did, however, find 2 new darvic-ringed Canada Geese - U48 (5280238) and 2N5 (5262968). Both birds had been ringed 17km away at the University of Nottingham's lake. U48 was ringed on 23/06/17, and has only been reported once, at the place of ringing, before my report. 2N5 was ringed on 09/07/16, and was recaptured on 23/06/17, at the same site, before being reported by me today (the first record away from Nottingham).

U48

2N5

Other birds seen at Alvaston were Ring-necked Parakeet (heard), Shoveler and Common Gull (c.5 adults and first winter/2nd calendar year birds).