New Year Gulls - Part 2

As well as visiting Rufford Park last week (see here), I also had a quick visit to Alvaston Park in Derby.

The trip was quite frustrating as, although there were 200+ Black-headed Gulls in and around the lake, I couldn't find any darvic ringed birds in the hour and a half I was there! Thankfully, a well known metal ringed bird, VA4073 ( a Danish-ringed bird, born in May 2018, and seen here in November 2018 and November 2019), came to the rescue.

VA4073

Whilst there, I also saw a couple of darvic ringed Canada Geese. Again, these birds were well known, having been recorded here in February 2019 (see here). The birds had originally been ringed at the University of Nottingham in 2016 and 2017.

U48

2N5

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).