Sunrise at Pembroke

There were more than a thousand gulls on Pembroke Beach soon after sunrise yesterday morning. The vast majority were Herring Gulls, but with a scattering of Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Great Black-backed Gulls. On this beach and on Chouet Landfill Beach another 100+ gull colour ring readings were taken – with the highlights both being GBBGs – my first 2012 colour-ringed chick of the year – Yellow 1.HH6 from Vale, Guernsey and Green E.71 a well-known visitor ringed as a chick on Chausey Islands, Manche, France in July 2009. This gull has been seen in Guernsey on many occasions in each subsequent year, but was last recorded in January 2012.

Recently I saw Mediterranean Gull White 3E90 (ringed in Belgium) back at its usual autumn roosting site at Bellegreve Bay (the 7^th consecutive autumn that this gull has been see in Guernsey). This year the bird was first reported by Mike Cunningham on 18 July 2012, when he took a very nice photos of the bird (below).

 Mediterranean Gull White 3E90 Grande Havre, Guernsey 18 July 2012 (c) Mike Cunningham

 Sunrise at Pembroke

 Chouet Landfill Beach

 GBBG Yellow 1.HH6 Pembroke

The Beaches are Turning into Gull Crèches!

It is fantastic at the moment to go to Pembroke or Chouet beaches for many juvenile gulls (Herring and Lesser Black-backed) are to be found playing at the edge of the sea…picking at anything floating or being tossed in on the waves. So far I’ve spotted 13 of our colour ringed juvenile Herring Gulls (from Jethou and Lihou Islands) and four Lesser Black-backed Gulls (all from Sark). The Alderney gulls are usually a couple of weeks later in their breeding…so hopefully they will begin to turn up here too very shortly!

Guernsey Gulls in France

Perhaps not surprisingly we are now receiving several reports of our colour ringed Herring Gulls summering in nearby towns along the adjacent French coast. Two such reports this weekend involved Herring Gulls White 4CP5 and metal ring E16633 both seen and photographed by Guillaume Chevrier at Saint Servan-sur-Mer, near St Malo and also White 1.AN4 reported from Cherbourg by Sophie Rivrins. I expect these are birds which were born and raised in France, which were visiting Guernsey when ringed.

 Herring Gull White 1.AN4 Cherbourg, Manche, France (c) Sophie Rivrins

The Last Gull Catch of the Summer Season (Honest!)

OK...I know I've said it before...but today the small Guernsey Gull Team took the last gull catch of the summer season in the garden. It was a very nice modest catch of 26 Herring Gulls, including two juvenile birds. It was such a relaxed and enjoyable way to conclude a fantastic summer's activities in the garden (despite the weather raining us off on far too many Sunday's!). It was particularly enjoyable to see the four us us (Chris, Phil, Carolyn and me) working like a well-oiled machine...pity the season's over really!

The last Herring Gull of the Summer Season?

Lots of Gulls at Chouet

A really fabulous couple of hours after dawn at Pembroke and Chouet Landfill were very well rewarded with more than 200 colour ring reads. One of the Sark-ringed LBBG chicks was on Pembroke (the first of the year), while Lesser Black-backed Gulls were present in large numbers (c 700) at Chouet landfill. This total included an astounding number of unringed birds, surely indicating that there were a fair few migrants amongst them (but no foreign colour rings). There were also two Yellow-legged Gulls in the Landfill - one adult and one 3rd calendar year bird.