Rufford - 29th October 2025

 On Wednesday 29th, I popped across to The Carrs, at Church Warsop, to see if there were any ringed gulls around. I saw 2 new birds. Afterwards, I went across to Rufford, and spotted another 20 (!) ringed gulls, including P519, the Lithuanian-ringed bird, that I first saw in January 2019.

The two birds seen at The Carrs were 277C (ringed in January 2024, as an age 5, born in 2023) and 201F  (ringed in February 2024, also as an age 5).

277C

Arriving at Rufford, there were about 250 Black-headed Gulls, including a lot of birds not seen before, or not seen this winter. The highlight for me was P519, back for, at least, its 8th winter.

P519

Other birds seen were: 285A, 295A (1st sighting this winter), 269B (1st Rufford sighting), 202C (1st sighting this winter), 207C, 258C, 270C (1st sighting this winter), 273C (1st sighting this winter), 214F, 221F, 223F (1st sighting this winter), 234F, 239F, 259F (a 1st winter bird, ringed on 18/10/25), 261F (1st sighting since December 2024), 262F, 287F (my first sighting), 2V05 (1st sighting since January 25), 2V10 and 2V16.

269B

259F

287F

Other birds seen were: Kingfisher (1), Common Gull (1), Lesser Black-backed Gull (2 adults), Mute Swan (4 unringed adults) and the first Goosander of the winter (10 birds; 8 redheads and 2 males).

Common Gull

Last Gulls of 2020?

Today I was out with 3 members of Sorby Breck Ringing Group for a gull ringing session at The Carrs in Warsop again. With news that our areas are going into Tier 4 COVID restrictions from midnight tonight this will be our last ringing outing and my last chance to check gulls in 2020.

We were on site from 08:30 until 15:45 and managed to catch 1 new Black-headed Gull. The bird in question was an adult and was given the darvic ring 271A.

271A

Whilst there we also manged to re-sight 2 gulls that the group had previously ringed, namely 265A and 270A. Both birds had been ringed in December this year.

265A

270A

Gull Ringing - 22nd December 2020

Last Tuesday I managed to get out gull ringing for the first time this winter. I spent five hours at The Carrs in Warsop with members from Sorby Breck Ringing group and Birklands Ringing Group (all socially distanced of course). In total we caught five new Black-headed Gulls, to add to the darvic-ringing scheme, and I was lucky enough to ring four of them! The site is just short of 9km from Rufford, so hopefully, I'll pick some of these birds up, during the winter months. The new rings added were 266A - 270A.

266A (adult female)

267A