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.
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| Gulls at Quarteira, Faro, Portugal (c) PKV |
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.
ReplyDeleteHi Carl
ReplyDeleteJust 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!