Gull-fest at Coverack

The last few days have seen increasing numbers of gulls following fishing boats into Coverack harbour. Whilst the highlight for many are the four (or more) Glaucous Gulls there, members of the ringing group have been focusing more on reading colour rings.

As many as a thousand gulls are in the bay at any one time

Whilst birders focus on the first-winter Glaucous Gull (left), others are more interested in colour-ringed birds, such as this yellow-ringed Great Black-backed Gull from Guernsey (right)

Over the last few days, we've managed to read rings on 18 different birds, including birds from France, Guernsey (4), Skokholm, Denny Island in the Bristol Channel, Portland, Looe Island (5) and Falmouth (5).

W047 was ringed in Falmouth and is usually seen at Helston Boating Lake. It was seen there as recently as 21st before taking up residence at Coverack from 24th.

DAC was ringed on Denny Island in the Bristol Channel in 2013. It has since been seen on the Camel Estuary (21/12/13), Cadgwith (26/1/14), Chew Valley Lake (11/8/14) and Blagdon Lake (15/10/14), before turning up at Coverack this week.

Red W:043 is from Skokholm Island in south Wales, and was seen sat close to blue W:043 which is one of our own Herring Gulls from Falmouth!

Just to keep everyone happy, here's a couple of photos of Glaucous Gulls, showing a very bleached bird and a very fresh one.

Autumn migrants going the wrong way and more Welsh Stormies

We've just received a whole batch of reports back from the BTO detailing some movements of birds to and from the group area. There were rather a lot of local movements, but here are some of the highlights.

 

Our great run of Storm Petrel movements continues (see the first few here), with yet more movements to and from Wales. This time we received details of four birds ringed at The Lizard that were recaught in Pembrokeshire, on Skokholm Island and at Wooltack Point. Two of these were birds ringed in 2012 and 2013, but the others were quite quick same-year movements, at 38 days, 26 days and 20 days. In fact, all of these last three were ringed on the same date (30th June), the same date we also caught a Portuguese-ringed bird.

The Portuguese-ringed Stormie caught back in June

We then just had one Storm Petrel movement he other way, from Skokholm to The Lizard (194km), but in managed this in just one day! It was ringed at 00:40 on 24th July and recaught down at The Lizard at 00:30 on 25th July.

 

Two rather more unusual reports came from Nanjizal, with migrants moving north in the late summer/autumn. A Sedge Warbler ringed on 21st August was recaught 250km away in Dorset seven days later (so moving northeast) and even more bizarrely a juvenile Sand Martin ringed on 10th July was recaught nearly 500km away in West Yorkshire six days later! This again is a very quick northeasterly movement and seems most odd...

Six-day movement of Sand Martin Z118605

Birds of a feather...

...and a rather smelly feather at that! But do they really stick together?

We've just received various reports of our ringed birds from BTO, detailing when/where they've been found subsequently. For a House Sparrow and Blue Tit ringed at the Stithians feeding station this wasn't too far, being found just along the road; the former found dead and the latter killed hitting a window.

But we did also receive news of two of our Storm Petrels recaught on Skokholm Island. Both had been ringed at Hot Point, Lizard, on 11th July 2013, being recaught on Skokholm on 24th and 30th July 2014 (see details on the Skokholm Island blog). Interestingly, last year ringers on Skokholm also recaught two other Stormies ringed on 11th July, so there musty have been something special about that night. Looking back, we ringed 78 birds that night, which is the second most we've ever caught in any one night at Hot Point, beaten only by 80 birds on 7th-8th July 2013 (blogged here). So maybe there was just something special about that week...

The map below shows Hot Point, Lizard, in yellow and all of the sites where we've exchanged Storm Petrels in red, with Skokholm highlighted in orange. The bias towards the English Channel and southern Irish Sea is perhaps not surprising, but it's a bit surprising we don't draw in more passage birds heading to colonies further north.

Welsh wanderer

Although not strictly a West Cornwall Ringing Group bird, Great Black-backed Gull L:AU8 has been seen on our patch a couple of times...

It was ringed as a chick on St George's Island, Looe, in 2011 and was first seen on Hayle estuary in October 2011. It wasn't reported again until 24th September when it was on Skokholm Island, Pembrokeshire, and then the shockingly bad iPhone-scoped photo below (mine...) came from Copperhouse Creek, Hayle, just 26 days later (10th October).

Presumably this bird won't breed for another couple of years and will continue to wander, so where will it turn up next? Hayle is a great place to look for colour-ringed gulls and if you're lucky enough to find one then details of project coordinators can be found on the cr-birding website.