Saturday 11 March 2017

Get your Gulls on..!!!!

If you like Gulls then Rufforth tip near York is a treat. It can be very frustrating with 1000's of gulls all over the place ,  but they only settle down every now and then because the area is next to an airfield , a very busy road and gun shots going off all the time.
  But when they do settle down to loaf and preen a hole host of ages and species can be observed closely.In six hours Me and Nick D have found
Glaucous Gull x 3 first winters
Iceland Gull x 1 3rd winter /adult and a first winter
Caspian Gull 4 x 3rd Winter

 Yellow Legged Gull 1 x 3rd winter

Get your Gulls on.!!!!!!!!!!!!!

8 comments:

Brian Sumner . said...

Was this sight Harewood Whin near York Andy.

AndyC said...

yes its near york , takes about 50 mins from here. Rufforth tip.

Brian Sumner . said...

NP got a Herring gull ring Y747 in Lister Park bradford a couple of weeks ago and Ive just got a reply. It was caught using a cannon net at Harewood Whin 7/10/16 and roosts either on the Humber Estuary or Lower Derwent Valley reserve. This is the first sighting since it was rung. They have so far rung 1750 gulls from the tip.

AndyC said...

Did you ever hear about the barny with a ring on at Cold edge .

Brian Sumner . said...

Still waiting for a reply Andy. Got confirmation and said the info had been passed on to the ringing authority concerned but nothing back yet.

AndyC said...

yes bri it is harewood whin site, had about 1750 gulkls in one field there the other day.and they get up 20,000 in the winter roost...amazing

AndyC said...

Another successful gull catch at Harewood Whin landfill site at Rufforth last month resulted in 347 large gulls being cannon netted and colour-ringed as part of an ongoing project. The totals for the day included 344 Herring Gulls, 1 Greater Black-backed Gull and 2 Lesser Black-backed Gulls - bringing the overall totals of gulls colour-ringed since March 2015 to just under 1600. A total of 400 sightings have been sent in so far, involving nearly 200 individuals, with sightings stretching all the way along the East Coast and as far west as Bristol and south to Cornwall.

A few highlights are listed below:

- Lesser Black-backed Gulls have been sighted in France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

- Herring Gulls have been reported from France, Jersey, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway, and several have been noted interchanging between here and landfill sites down in Essex by the North Thames Gull group.

- A single Greater Black-backed Gull was caught with a Norwegian ring on, and one of our ringed GBB was spotted in Cornwall.


The collection of this data is certainly adding to our knowledge of ‘local’ birds that join the nationally important LDV roost sites and feed on the landfill site during the day – and will hopefully tell us what these birds might end up doing after this site, like many landfill sites, start to close next year. Please send any sightings in of any colour-ringed birds seen whilst visiting the reserve or elsewhere – thank you. Many thanks to the team for their efforts and an extra thank you to the staff at Yorwaste, without whose help and cooperation this would not have been possible.
Taken from york birders blogg

AndyC said...

pretty sure these are Herring Gulls with small dark eyes , and not Caspians as mentioned (AC 2020 Jan)