A very wet day, it rained for the whole morning and showers continued in the afternoon until quite late. I was watching the skies quite closely as we had a plan to go out to the gull nesting island to ring some young black-headed gulls, but we needed it to be dry. Our luck was in, after four o’clock the rain stopped and the sun even came out, so the trip was on.
Approaching the island
Due to poor weather we were rather later than usual this year and as a result most of the gull chicks had already flown or just swan into the lake and watched us from a safe distance. We have been ringing some each year for a while now, but only in the last few have we been colour-ringing them, this enables the ring to be read in the field and results in a lot more records. It also means that we don’t need to catch so many birds to get results. The rings are large and easy to see with a telescope or even binoculars if the bird is close.
gull chick with a new colour-ring
Although most of the black-headed gull chicks were large there were a few nests with eggs or very tiny chicks, these nests were probably relays, that is second attempts by pairs that lost their first clutch.
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 