Colour Ringed Little Egret

Tony Loaring recently photographed a Little Egret with colour rings N4 at Fort Le Crocq. This bird is part of a Guernsey-based project run by Jamie Hooper. It was the only chick ringed on the first visit to the colony this season!

Little Egret N4

Guernsey Gulls Every Day in Portugal!

Guernsey colour-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gulls were seen on every day of my recent trip to the Algarve, Portugal! In total I made 33 observations of 21 different Guernsey birds - making the trip extremely successful. Based for nine days at Ferragudo, near Portimao in the Algarve, I managed to record gulls each morning and late afternoon mainly at three sites - Portimao Fish Port, Porto do Lagos Landfill and Quarteira Beach.
191 observations of 142 different colour-ringed LBBGs were made with birds from Scotland (four), England (24), Wales (six), Guernsey (21), Iceland (one), Germany (seven), Norway (11), Denmark (five), The Netherlands (33), Belgium (16), France (eight), Spain (two) and Portugal (four).
19 different Yellow-legged Gulls were also recorded as follows:- Algeria (one), Spain (five) and Portugal (13). Two Audouin's Gulls were from Corsica and Spain, while the nine White Storks recorded were from Portugal (seven), France (one) and Germany(one). The origins of a Greater Flamingo and Pied Avocet have yet to be traced.
The weather was absolutely superb - wall to wall sunshine and very warm - it was the summer we never got in Guernsey this year! . It was very nice to meet up with local ornithologist Carlos Pacheco (who regularly finds Guernsey Gulls in Portugal) and also Michael Davis (who reported some of my very first LBBGs from Quarteira...and has done so every year since 2009!). All in all a most relaxing and highly successful trip.

 Portimao Fishing Port

 Porto do Lagos Landfill

 Quarteira Fishing Port

 Gulls on Quarteira Beach

 Carlos Pacheco and PKV - Ferragudo

LBBGs from all over Western Europe!

German Spoonbills, Norwegian and French GBBGs and Belgian LBBG

A couple of Eurasian Spoonbills have been in Guernsey for the past few days. Thanks to the excellent photos by Tony Loaring we now have details of both birds. The one with the colour rings was ringed as a nestling on the German Wadden Sea island of Mellum on 30 May 2012. It then moved 25 km to Eckwardersiel near Wilhelmshaven on the mainland on 11 August where it was seen with the black-ringed individual on 24 August. The black-ringed bird was ringed there as a nestling, also on 30 May 2012, by the same ringers! There have been no further records of them since 24 August until they both turned up in Guernsey on 7 October 2012. 

Spoonbills at Fort Le Crocq 07 October 2012 (c) Tony Loaring

The Guernsey Gulls Blog has been quiet for nearly two weeks because I have been in southern Portugal in search of colour-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gulls - especially those ringed in the Bailiwick of Guernsey. I will make some separate postings regarding the success of this trip.

Today I made my first run down Guernsey's west coast to see what has happened to the LBBG and GBBG flocks along the coast. I was surprised to find c 300 LBBGs - including 11 of our locally colour-ringed birds. At least one third of the gulls could not be checked. Amongst the flock on Vazon Beach was a 2nd year Blue TZ.AY - ringed in Belgium. 

GBBGs were not numerous - perhaps 120 birds, but the flock included my first Norwegian-ringed bird of the autumn - Black JA612 (ringed as a chick in Vest-Agder in 2008, and seen in several previous autumns in Guernsey!). There were also three French-ringed GBBGs (two Chausey and one from Le Havre).

Little Change in West Coast LBBG Flock, but GBBGs Continue to Arrive in Small Numbers

90 minutes in Chouet landfill on Saturday morning resulted in c 150 local Herring Gull colour ring reads, along with two juvenile LBBGs from Alderney and a few GBBGs. Trips down the west coast on Saturday and Sunday showed little change in the LBBG flock (still c 350 birds), and only a small number of GBBGs are present (in relatively calm weather). However, amongst the GBBGs were several new returning cr birds from Chausey, France and also a new arrival of a chick ringed at Portland Harbour this summer (White P:42A).

There were two Yellow-legged Gulls at Chouet Landfill on Saturday (one adult and one third winter) and one adult on L'Eree Beach on Sunday.

Yellow-legged Gull Chouet landfill 29 September 2012