Gull colour ring re-sightings

I got news of a Herring Gull colour ring re-sighting today.
Les Kneale had been passed a sighting by a friend who saw T3XB in the area of The Hibernian this morning.
That bird had been ringed by Sean in his garden on 22 July 2010.
It is the 4th of our colour ringed Herring Gulls to be reported to us, many thanks to Les and everyone else who has passed the details onto us.

Maps showing the re-sightings of the colour ringed Herring Gulls so far. The colour ring codes of the Gulls are shown beside where they have been seen.

Control Herring Gull

The Control Herring Gull that I caught using a 'fleyg net' yesterday on Bob Taylors charter boat 'Gemini' turned out to have been a bird originally ringed on the Calf of Man.

GA35605 was ringed as a chick on 17th June 2001 at Cow Harbour, Calf of Man.
That makes the Gull a little over 9 years old.

Hopefully we will learn more about the bird following the addition of the colour ring "T0TW" when we caught it yesterday.

The other Herring Gull we caught and ringed just off Port St Mary harbour was seen by Bob when he went out on his boat later that evening. He was able to read the colour ring as the Gull came back to the boat looking for more fish scraps! It just goes to show how the addition of colour rings results in a much higher reporting rate and we will hopefully learn some interesting information on the movements of Manx Gulls.

Remember, if you see one of the colour ringed Gulls, do please contact us with the following details:
Date, time, location (with grid reference if possible), what the bird was doing. You will be sent a full 'life history' of the bird with the original capture details and any other previous sightings.

Pelagic trip

My good old friend Jase is over on the IOM at the moment with his family and today he had booked a trip out on Bob Taylor's boat "Gemini".
The Manx BirdLife crew gathered for the trip and it turned out to be a fantastic day out on the sea with Bob and his crew, John and Peter.

We started with the obligatory stop at the Sugarloaf rock, it was great to see plenty of well grown Kittiwake pulli on the ledges and there were a few pulli Gullemots both on the ledges and also on the sea. Looks like they have both had a good breeding season for a change.

We then motored on through the Calf Sound and loacted a Basking Shark off the West coast. Bob expertly put the boat in the tidal stream, cut the engines and the shark came right alongside the boat several times. It was HUGE! Almost 30ft long and a good 6 or 7ft across!

A pot buoy was sighted drifting in the tidal stream and was recovered in the landing net for use by Bob. On bringing it aboard we found a Lumpsucker fish attached to the underside. A great little fish and one that looks like it belonged in some tropical sea, not several miles off the Isle of Man.

At this point Jase and I had a view of a Shearwater that got our attention as being brown above and 'smudgy' looking below. The contrast between it and the numerous Manx Shearwaters in the area was very noticeable. Unfortunately it was rapidly heading into the glare of the Sun and away form us. We both had thoughts of Balearic Shearwater but couldn't nail it down on the split second, poor view we had.

We then reached the wreck of the 'Ringwall', about 6 miles or so West of Port Erin and spent a while fishing.
Good numbers of Mackerel were brought aboard for bait and a few Spur Dogs were also caught. Other species caught included Whiting, Haddock and Grey Gurnard. A Minke Whale also gave a couple of brief views to the West of the wreck as it surfaced.

Jase and I then saw another brown shearwater come across the stern of the boat and this time there was no doubt as to its identification. Out went the shout for 'Balearic!'. It perfromed well during the brief view, banking several times to show its undersides and turned to show the head/breast too. Fantastic!!

On the trip back I used up some of the left over Mackerel bait to 'fleyg net' 2x Herring Gulls, one of which turned out to be a control! The control was given one of our colour rings as was the new bird.

A great day out with some really good friends. I just wish I had remembered my camera!!!

Storm Petrels

Sean and I went to Fort Island last night to 'tape lure' Storm Petrels.
We caught 9 in total, 6 new and 3 controls, a dissapointing total for what were fairly ideal conditions.
I will publish details of the controls when I get the information back from the BTO.

It was a good night though with plenty of banter and good company with Kay, Katie and my old mate Jase from Orkney coming along.

Jase and I processing Storm Petrels - picture courtesy of Sean

I didn't have my camera with me last night but here are some pictures from presvious nights.

Storm Petrels - pictures by Ian Scott

Colour ringing schemes used by Manx Ringing Group

I have added a link to a document giving details of the colour ringing schemes we are currently using to the Manx RG Links in the side menu.
The same document can be viewed by clicking here.

Pictures below from the top - Chough with colour rings, 'Black type' colour ring used on Herring & LBB Gulls, 'Orange type' colour ring used on Herring & LBB Gulls.

More Gulls

On Tuesday afternoon of this week I met up with Sean to access the landfill site at the Point of Ayre. We had seen a good few Gull chicks on there just a few days earlier but after searching the site all we could come up with was one Great Black-backed Gull chick. See Seans blog here for a picture.

Then this afternoon, having had my 'Moudry' large spring-trap repaired by the best seamstress on the Island, I got back up and running on the Herring Gulls in my garden again.

This one was given colour ring 'T8TY'.
We have colour ringed over 40 Herring Gulls so far this year, all having a Black colour ring on their Left leg with a combination of 4 letters/digits in Yellow.
Keep an eye out for these birds and we would really welcome any sightings of them.

More Pulli

Another few days ringing some cracking pulli.
My 'days off' started on Friday by meeting Adam from Manx BirdLife to go and ring the chicks from a Hen Harrier nest he had found.

Four well grown young 'FM' (Feathers medium) in the nest consisted of 3 big females and a smaller, though similarly well developed, male. The nest well very well situated - I'm still picking thorns from every tipe of throny plant species out of my legs!!

And today I met up with Sean to go and ring some Gull chicks near the Point of Ayre. Click here to see Sean's blog for some pictures of the Gulls.
We ringed 9 Lesser Black-backed Gull, 2 Great Black-backed Gull and a Herring Gull. All well developed 'FM' stage. The GBB Gulls were big bruisers and already had a strong bite on them!

We then took a trip down to Rue Point to check on the Terns and waders. We ringed a further 2 Oystercatcher chicks and another Little Tern chick.

Oystercatcher pulli playing hide and seek...

Little Tern pulli

A great couple of days ringing. Thanks to Adam and Sean, great company and good banter as always!