Urban gull ringing in Falmouth

This last week we've been out colour-ringing the first Herring Gull chicks on roofs in Falmouth. This project, in conjunction with Falmouth Marine School, with hopefully build up a reasonable colour-ringed population in the town allowing future studies on movements and behaviour. With so much 'pasty-snatching' and bin-raiding in Cornish towns, this is certainly a hot topic at the moment.

Over the summer we'll be ringing as many chicks as we can safely reach and also hopefully catching adults later in the year in a cage trap. Each bird is marked with a blue ring, coded W: followed by three numbers. Coincidentally, the first birds ringed in the project were on the roof of the Marine School, with more to follow there.