Winter wanderings of a St Ives gull

We've recently been able to look at some of the data from the GPS data-loggers on the three gulls in St Ives and one of these in particular is quite interesting. Logger 4036 (colour ring Blue W:181) was a breeding male originally ringed on the roof of the Co-op in St Ives. Over November-December 2014 it took a couple of trips out to the north, visiting Lundy Island for an overnight stop on one date. A second trip then took it out to both Great and Little Saltee Islands, a brief visit to some fields near Duncormick (as far as 240km from St Ives) and then a visit to Hook Head.

What is also interesting is the time it spent at sea on its return, with a cluster of points in the Celtic Sea. It is possible that it was either following fishing boats feeding or a resting bird 'riding the tide'.

W:181 has always been a very pelagic bird, and the track below (in yellow) shows some of its movements during the breeding season, again wandering out into the Celtic Sea.

Many thanks to Peter Rock for getting to grips with the data and producing the maps here.

A day of gull coincidences

Yesterday two of us had a nice day out at the seaside, eating ice creams in St Ives. Well when I say eating ice creams I mean tempting in a few food-snatching gulls to drop a hand net over. Three ice creams and a bit of sandwich later and we'd ringed and, more importantly, colour-ringed 10 Herring Gulls. It proved to be quite a spectacle on the packed prom and beach of St Ives, with small crowds of tourists and locals gathering every time we struck - good PR but a bit nerve-wracking!

Some birds didn't seem overly worried by the whole affair, with the first bird we ringed back in the same spot 30 minutes later chasing other gulls off his patch. But after an afternoon along the same strip of prom it did become strangely gull-free, so obviously word had spread of what we were up to.

Blue W186 back on territory by Rod's Deckchairs on the prom

Leaving St Ives, we headed south towards Nanceldra where we knew that some of our GPS data-logger gulls hang out. One favourite spot is the largest dairy farm in the area, with roofs full of gulls and crows. As we passed another favourite field we noticed a bird with unusually rather fat legs sat on a telegraph pole. A rapid stop in the middle of the road later and we could confirm this was W:182, a nesting female ringed by us in May.

Spot the fat-legged gull

A slightly better digi-scoped view of W:182,
though you can't quite see the backpack-mounted data-logger

We then continued on to another area where birds have recently been seen, and speaking to the owners they confirmed that there had been lots of mowing recently which is what the birds have been homing in on - mowed rodents! Bizarrely they even knew of the tagging project through friends who own the B&B we stayed in back in May in St Ives!

But an even more bizarre coincidence was that this same couple had found one of our Barn Owls dead last year and promptly popped into the house and presented us with the ring back! They also knew the owner of the farm where we ringed the bird two years ago and while we were there it seemed rude to not check their three owl boxes, but sadly no birds.

So a very crazy afternoon of coincidence and certainly worth the minor injuries sustained diving after gulls on the prom...

Knuckles are over-rated anyway

Rooftop gulls and garden demos

We've had a pretty busy week, so are a bit behind on the blog, so only a quick update here...

At the end of last week we were out filming with Finestripe productions, who are working on a BBC1 programme (Britain's Boldest, out in the autumn) looking at our interactions with wildlife, including pasty-snatching urban gulls. So we were out for the day in St Ives fitting four breeding Herring Gulls with GPS loggers, which then transmit via relay stations to a base station positioned for the summer in a local B&B. At the moment the loggers are just recording a position every 10 minutes, but at the height of pasty-snatching behaviour they'll record a position several times a minute, allowing us to follow these birds around the town.

One of our Herring Gulls with its solar-powered GPS logger

The loggers also have an inbuilt accelerometer, so we'll hopefully be able to see the exact behaviours of these birds as well. Exciting times!

Not a bad place to live...

Birds were caught with a modified pet run, now a cage trap!

Rooftop filming with urban gull guru Peter Rock

We then changed location at the weekend, setting up at Trebah Gardens for a weekend Wildlife Celebration with Cornwall Wildlife Trust. We've run a ringing demo at this annual event for a few years now, but this is the first time at this new location (it used to be at the Lost Gardens of Heligan). Things didn't look good, as all of our nestboxes (admittedly only put up in February) were empty and the peanut feeders had been helpfully emptied by local squirrels, but we persisted anyway...

In the end, we caught just about enough birds to keep the crowds happy, including plenty of Robins (always a hit), Nuthatch, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Chiffchaff, Blackcap and a couple each of Blue, Great and Coal Tit.

Robins are always popular with the kids

These demos are a great way to get kids hands on and enthused about wildlife and we were pretty busy on both days. We also managed to recruit a couple more potential trainees, at least one new Barn Owl site and another good gull contact, so good for us too!

Big thanks to Emma for helping out over the weekend and also for taking some pics.

Arctic Tern logger update

A while ago we reported the finding of a mystery bird with a GPS data logger (more here), and we have just solved the mystery!

The mystery data logger

The Polish manufacturers of the device were able to download the data and identify the bird as an Estonian-ringed Arctic Tern, exactly as predicted! It was originally ringed on 26th June 2013 on Sorgu island (in red below), on the same day as the bird caught on the Ythan estuary that we mentioned in the original post.

Ringing locations of the Arctic Tern (red) and the three Common Terns (green).
View Cornish terns in a larger map.

This is the first Arctic Tern recovery in Cornwall, and we don't have many of the other tern species either! There are just seven records of British-ringed Sandwich Terns in the county and records of Common Terns ringed in Strathclyde, The Netherlands and Finland (in red above).

Another Aquatic-less day, but perhaps an Estonian Arctic Tern instead?

With the wind hinting at turning to the east, we headed to Marazion this morning in the hope of a late Aquatic Warbler. But sadly still no luck, although 32 birds caught wasn't too bad considering how quiet the reedbed seemed. These were mostly Reed Warblers, though one of the driest net rides did catch this rather smart female Kingfisher (female by virtue of being greeny-blue instead of bluey-green) and almost caught a passing Common Sandpiper. Overnight the wind is proper easterly though, so maybe tomorrow will be the day...

A bit of extra interest for the morning came with the delivery, via RSPB, of a GPS data logger that was reported on an injured tern at Sennen Cove on Saturday. Unfortunately the bird died but the second finder only removed the data logger and not the ring, so we're still a bit in the dark as to what the bird was and where it was from! Rumour has it though that an Estonian-ringed Arctic Tern caught in Grampian recently also had a similar logger, so here's hoping...

 

 

We won't find out for a while though as the logger has to go back to the manufacturer (in Poland) to be downloaded to ID the bird. For info, the aerials allow the GPS data to be downloaded remotely to a radio base-station once the bird is back on its breeding grounds. So for those with 1107 € to spend, check out the technical specs here.

Thanks to Tony Mills for the Kingfisher photo and Terry George (Sennen Cove Birdwatching), Kester Wilson and Dave Flumm for eventually getting the logger to us.