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Sightings of Guernsey colour ringed Gulls can be entered here for an instant life history, or sent to pkv@cwgsy.net for a life history to be returned by e-mail to observers.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Another Wonderful Trip to Southern Portugal


I’m just back from a very enjoyable trip to the Algarve, Portugal, based near the gull haven of Quarteira, with its fishing port and sandy beaches. During my stay there were good flocks of LBBGs and Yellow-legged Gulls around, and I managed to take 219 gull colour ring reads – the vast majority (183) on LBBGs, with 35 Yellow-legged Gulls and just a single Mediterranean Gull. The LBBGs came from the usual very good spread of projects run in countries from Iceland, through Norway, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain and Portugal. However…the highlights for me were of course the 41 observations of 31 different LBBGs ringed in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, including one of this year’s chicks from Burhou, Alderney. Many of these GuernseyGulls show great site fidelity to this area of the Algarve in autumn/winter. My thanks to Michael Davis, who first discovered the Quarteira area as a fantastic place to observe gulls, and also for helping to make sure that I got the best from my most recent visit.





Gulls at Quarteira, Faro, Portugal (c) PKV


 
 

2 comments:

  1. It look like you had a great time and by the looks of it you pinched all the gulls that I was hoping for in the Portimao area. I was there from the 27/09 until the 05/10. Gulls were there, but in smaller numbers than in 2013. I still managed to record 60 cr gulls, so not too bad.

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  2. Hi Carl

    Just read your blog on Portugal - sounds like an excellent trip! There seem to be more michahellis now at Portimao (compared to a few years back), but just as I was leaving the port one day one of the large fishing boats returned towing a huge "snowstorm" of gulls...and the majority were fuscus. Fortunately they settled on the sands which enabled quite a few rings to be read, but I must have still missed quite a few!

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