St Ives Herring Gulls back on the TV

For anyone that missed the original airing of the programme, some of our gull-tracking work that featured on the BBC is available again on iPlayer for the next couple of weeks. The programme 'Nature's Boldest Thieves' looked at the food-snatching behaviour of birds in St Ives and included some work on birds that we colour-ringed and also tracked using GPS data-loggers.

The programme can be viewed on iPlayer here, or just click on the image below.

The bits to look out for on our work are at 14:30, 32:15 and 41:50. The work is still ongoing, so if anyone comes across any of our blue-ringed gulls then do let us know (details on the contacts page).

St Ives gulls on the BBC

We've blogged a bit about some of the gull work we've been involved with in St Ives (here, here and here), but the BBC show that funded this was eventually broadcast earlier this evening on BBC1. If you're quick you can catch it on iPlayer for the next few days (available here).

The programme is worth a watch, but for those pressed for time, the amusing bits to look out for are us catching a few birds from 14:40 and a hint at some of the GPS logger results from 32:20, although they gloss over the fact that since the summer we've accumulated over 35 million data points from these birds!

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.

Another gull coincidence

Following the bizarre gull coincidence we blogged about before (here), they just keep coming! On the weekend I needed to go out to St Ives to replace a battery on one of the relay stations (that bounce the downloaded logger data to our base station) and also to retrieve one of the loggers from the Co-op roof that had either fallen off or been removed by one of the gulls... We knew the bird was alive and well as it had been seen on Hayle estuary by ring-reader extraordinaire Steve Lister (holidaying Leicestershire county recorder), but the tag was still just transmitting from the rooftop!

One of the two relay stations in St Ives

The retrieved logger, unfortunately now minus aerial

Whilst I was there it would be rude to not have a look on the beach for some of our birds... As ever, W:186 was still mugging children on the beach by Rod's Deckchairs (now accompanied by two begging juveniles) and on the beach by the ice cream parlour was W:194.

W:194 on the beach at St Ives, 20m from where it was ringed!

Once these jobs were done I decided to drop in to Hayle estuary to have a quick look through the gulls there. Not only did I bump into Steve Lister (and show him the logger dropped by the bird he'd seen earlier in the week), but also spotted a couple of our St Ives birds. Nothing really special there, until I realised that one of them was W:194 which must have followed me down from St Ives! I worked out I'd been watching it on the beach in St Ives just after 3pm and then watching it on the estuary at Hayle at 3:50pm. OK, so it's only a matter 4km from St Ives to Hayle as the gull flies, but I was impressed by the coincidence!

W:194 45 at Hayle, less than an hour after I'd been watching it in St Ives

Another poor CES visit and pasty-snatching gulls

A couple of us did the postponed CES this morning at Gunwalloe and despite the mud, sweat and much cursing, managed a paltry 23 birds. This doesn't exactly compare well with the 132 bids on the same visit in 2011, but oddly does beat the nine birds from last year. Most of this morning's catch were Reed Warblers (16, including two birds ringed in 2011), but a juvenile Whitethroat and an adult Swallow added a bit of interest. Finally (!!) we also caught our first Cetti's Warbler of the year; a bird we originally ringed as an adult back in 2011 and not recaught since. Having said that, one of the 2011 Reed Warblers hadn't been caught since ringing either...

On the gull front, last week was a bit manic, variously ringing 'pasty-snatching' gulls in St Ives (10 adults), rooftop gulls in Falmouth (nine chicks) and Great Black-backed Gulls on both Mullion Island (16 chicks) and Looe Island (74 chicks). The latter isn't our project, but read more about it on the Tamar Wildlife site. All of these gulls also received shiny new colour rings, so ones to keep an eye for in the future.

Blue W:186, caught with the help of an ice cream, turned out to be the
regular bird that holds territory at Rod's Deckchairs in St Ives

Sunny day on Mullion Island ringing gull chicks (Daisy Salmon)

We've also just seen the final county ringing totals on the BTO's online ringing report and it's interesting to compare with group totals. This is more a reflection of the lack of ringers in Cornwall, but in 2013 the group ringed ALL of the Storm Petrel (235), Cormorant (11), Shag (6), Kittiwake (10), Dipper (3), Stonechat (15), Wheatear (3) and Linnet (45) ringed in the county! Blowing our own trumpet a bit, we also ringed more than 90% of Meadow Pipit (392), Goldfinch (314) and Reed Bunting (48) in the county. So again a big thanks to everyone who helped out or let us ring on their land in 2013.

At the county level, more Great Black-backed Gulls (80) and Jackdaws (480) were ringed in Cornwall in 2013 than any other county, withe other notable totals for Rook (62, beaten only by Sussex) and Yellow-browed Warbler (19), losing out to the Northern Isles: Orkney (29) and Shetland (31).

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.