A Stunningly Successful Week at Chouet

Paul Roper and several members of the North Thames Gull Group have just completed a week working with the Guernsey Gulls Team to catch and ring full-grown gulls at Chouet landfill. With fantastic co-operation from the landfill staff, we managed to catch c 1,100 gulls, of which 1,000 were new (the other 100 being re-traps or controls of ringed birds). Highlights were the large number of Lesser Black-backed Gulls caught - c 500 - all of which were colour ringed, as well as a sample of the 500 or so Herring Gulls. Amongst the LBBGs were a Portuguese metal-ringed gull and two British -ringed LBBGs (one of which Blue ACE is well-known in Guernsey), while the other was an immature gull ringed by Peter Rock in SW England. We also caught and colour-ringed an adult Yellow-legged Gull (White 1FC1). This is such a tremendous contribution to our gull studies here in Guernsey! More details will follow, but below are some photos.