Cannon netting part 3

Three Sundays in a row with great weather for catching gulls. After snow on Saturday, the temperature on Sunday morning was around -10. It was freezing!! We set up the net at 7:46 but first gulls landed around 10!! Again!! I don't know what's their problem. They came at 8 but it took them some two hours to land for the first time. In next half an hour we had two catches (40 + 80 gulls). Highlights of first catch was adult  cachinnans and first corvid ringed at Jakusevec, a Jackdaw.

This Sunday Ivan helped me with ringing.

When we were almost finished, Ivan wemt and fired one more time so the total cathc was:

La rid        161
La can          4
La mich        2
La cach        1
total          168(new record by one gull :) )


I've managed to take a photo of the first year cachinnans wearing yellow ring with black inscription 3L7E.. Is this from  Lithuania? Just saw on Marco's site that it is from Lithuania :) second one ever on Jakusevec!

Cannon netting part 2

Sunday started perfectly.. Very cold (although only -2) and dense fog.  Everything was set at 8:00 so we expect that we'll have first catch at 8:05 but gulls had other plans.. They were flaying around( we could hear them) but didn't landed until 10:00(!!!!) We were a bit frozen, but adrenalin warmed us up when they start landing on tip. First catch was few minutes after. Some 50 birds.. Immediately after we set up the net again and some 5 minutes later we had 50 more birds. Last catch was at noon.
All in all:

Larus ridibundus                   129
Larus michahelis                     15
Larus canus                             2
                            total         146

 

BHGs are done, just few YLGs and we're done

Guys taking blood samples, on this photo with "nurse"

Last week we started using  INTERREX double loop rings for BHGs and I must say they're really easy to put on and have big inscription so I think they'll produce lot's of recoveries :)

I managed to take photo of one of the fuscus on Sunday so I'd be grateful for any comments on subspecies.

Just noticed that BHG has white SC04 :)

 This one looks like Baltic because of shade of black (no contrast between primaries and rest of the wing)   and only small white dot on P1 but it's much bigger (fatter) than birds that pass here in spring..

And just when i thought that this day is over, I got e-mail from Wolfgang with our first recovery of BHG ringed Last Sunday and found yesterday in Wien :)

Some new and old recoveries

During last few days I had few new recoveries.

One from Ingo Roesler in Frankfurt. It's BHG ringed in January 2010 on Jakusevec and found December 7th 2010.

I got nice recovery few days ago from Wolfgang Schweighofer from Austria. His colleague Richard Katzinger read white S062. That BHG was ringed 20/12/2009 on Jakusevec, than found on 13/5/2010 in Lithuania on Panasupio rubbish dump and finally on 29/11/2010 in Wien in Austria.



View S062 in a larger map


I hope I'll see it in week or two here in Zagreb :)

I got ringing data for PUAC. It was ringed on 5/6/2010 in Kreminchukske vdskhstsh (reservoir), Cherkasi in Ukraine..

Unfortunately we will not go to Zadar rubbish tip this weekend but we'll be probably catching on Jakusevec again.. Not so bad:) maybe fuscus will come in the catching area...

First cannon netting in Croatia

Sunday finally came! Weather was really nice, -7 and dense fog :)

We got on rubbish tip at 6:30 and went to find appropriate site to put the net. This is something I've been dreaming about for more than 10 years since I started working with gulls on Jakuševec.

At about 8:00 everything was set.. The circuit was OK. Only thing we had to do is to wait in the car for the gulls to start eating dog food and bread we put in front of the net. We waited around 3 minutes when first gulls appeared. First catch was made at 8:05 :) It was around 60 birds. As you can see I was pretty excited because I forgot that I had camera:) 
After putting all the birds into boxes and dog tents we decided to make another catch because the gulls were not afraid and we had some spare places in our boxes. It took us some 10 minutes to make second catch. It was around 50 birds.

After this we decided to ring and take samples from the gulls we caught.
I was done with ringing at around half past 11 and decided to try to make another catch. Jelena and I set everything and get in the car. This time there were more gulls in the area but we had the safe zone problems. We had gulls walking on net and cannons. It can make you very nervous when you have fuscus in the catching area (and it's never been ringed in Croatia plus I'd like to catch and photograph and measure one of these wintering birds) and cannot fire :(

Last catch was more than 60 birds :)

All in all:


Larus ridibundus               157
Larus canus                         2
Larus michahellis                 7
Larus ?                               1
                       total         167

We caught one BHG from Poland and added white colouring.
One of the michahellis  we caught on Sunday had Croatian yellow ring. After I got home I realized that this gull was ringed this year by us on Mljet :)

We have one big first year gull I'm not sure about the species, so I'm open to comments:) I'm thinking of lower bird. Upper one should be michahellis. (All people who wrote me agree that both of these gulls are michahellis)

 

During waiting for third catch I managed to read one cachinnans from Ukraine. Third one from Ukraine on Jakusevec ever( first two were on metal rings).

Next week I plan to catch on Zadar rubbish tip :)

Preparation for Sunday

Today we finally got our new net out in the field. After 5 shoots we managed to stretch it almost fully. We got the length but didn't manage to spread it so the final area covered was approximately 6 x 10 meters.. Jump ropes were fully stretched and trace ropes really helped.. We rope net according to Clark..

I didn't have camera so i only have this mob photo.. 3 Lapwing models didn't have any chance to escape. Another new thing is that we were increasing amount of  black powder and finally settled at 10grams per cannon. This is much quicker than last time..

Yesterday I rolled 200 colour rings.. So on Sunday I'm hoping to start rubbish season :)

Beginning of the Swan season

Few days ago someone told me that the swans are back on Zagreb lakes..
So Vedran and I took our bikes and went first on Jarun and than I went to Bundek lake.

There were 17 Mute Swans on Jarun lake.. All adults exept 1 jungster. We manage to take them all on the beach and read 4 neck collars and 2 metal rings.

On Bundek there were 21 Mute swans, 6 jungsters, 2 neck collars and 1 metal ring read.

All of these birds had Croatian rings. Strangers will come later:)

So the winter has started...next week will try our new net for cannons and (hopefully) soon try it on rubbish tip :)

Today I saw first bigger flock of BHGs on Sava river, some few hundreds

New one in Poland

Last night Marcin Romanowski wrote me about new BHG found in Poland
White S274 was rinegd on Jakusevec 31/1/2010 and found Yesterday in Gdansk:) (cca 1000km)

View S274 in a larger map

1st one in Sweden

Great news today from Kjeld Tommy Pedersen:)
One lady was feeding birds in Malmö and spotted one of BHG ringed with our white S165. The bird was ringed on December 20th 2009 on Jakuševec, and was found on November 6th 2010 in Malmö, some 1200 km from ringing place. It's the very first of our BHGs found in Sweden (hopefully not last :) )


View S165 in a larger map

Cannon netting

Today we finally managed to try the cannon nets :)

In last two months I've been collecting parts of this cannon net set that was bought in the 2006 and never been used before.. After getting all the stuff we tought we need( later we'll find out that we need some more parts) and managing to coordinate our schedules with weather conditions we finaly went shooting today:)

We got this aproximetlly 8x15 m net. First we tried to shoot the longer side and used 1g of black powder in each cannon. The resault is here:


First attempt:

There were 3 problems with this attempt: too big angle,not enough black powder and one side of the net got knotty :)


Second attempt:

Here we used 2 grams in each cannon and smaller angle... better.. Then we decided to try firing shorter side:



Third attempt:

I can't upload video right now, I'll try later..
Again 2grams but the middle of the net got stucked :(.. but the angle is good:)  Let's try 3grams with this angle



Fourth attempt:

3 grams, better ... this time we caught all wader models:) still the middle is not following the edges...

We'll need to put longer rope on the edges so that we give more time for middle to stretch.. We'll try that next week.. Any other suggestions?
Funny thing is that these cannons are not loud at all. Cars in the video are much further from the camera than the net..

BHGs started comming south

There were few very interesting "ring" situations last week.

I got ringed :)

Last week I got 3 nice recoveries of BHGs ringed on Jakusevec rubbish dump:
S348 was ringed on January 31st 2010 in Zagreb and found on October 16th 2010 in Odesa, Ukraine. cca 1100km.
It's my first in Ukraine :)

View S348 in a larger map

S948 was ringed on December 6th 2009 in Zagreb and found on October 15th 2010 in

Litvinov, Most, Ustecky, Czech Republic, cca 600km

View S948 in a larger map

S399 was ringed on February 7th 2010 in Zagreb and found on August 2nd and 22nd in Tollensesee, Neubrandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, cca 900 km.

View S399 in a larger map


In last few weeks I also got some recoveries of BHGs ringed last winter in Hungary..

Untill now I have more than 12% of BHGs ringed last winter found somewhere and think it's very nice percentage :)

On Friday will try our cannon net and if everything go well there'll be lot's of new ringed gulls this winter :)

First recoveries of Yelkouans and Scopoli's with Croatian ring

During last weekend Ivan, Zec, Vedran and I went ringing tubenoses around island of Lastovo.

On the first colony we ringed 25 new Yelkouans, what is a small number compering it with last years more than 50 :(

We think that the rats did a great damage  to colonies this year.

Three Yelkouans had rings from last year and are very first Yelkouans found with croatian ring :) All were ringed at the same place last year as adults.
Last year we estimated this colony to have 60-80 breeding pairs of Yelkouan Shearwater and ringed  42 adult birds. This year we caught 18 adult birds and only 3 had rings from last year.. It will be interesting to see in next years how many of ringed birds will we catch ..

On the other colony we found many holes that were used this year but not a single Yelkouan :(
We only found few Scopoli's but we didn't want to remove bird's from eggs while incubating so we only caught one with ring that just landed on the coast. It's the first ever recovery of Scopoli's Shearwater ringed with Croatian ring :) It was ringed on the same island last year.

BHG in Russia

Yesterday I got nice recovery !

One of the BHG we ringed(it's Kreso's ring) on November 26, 2006 on Jakusevec rubbish tip was photographed in Yaroslavl. It didn't have plastic ring, just metal.

We're waiting for the whole ring number (one digit is missing). If I understood right this is crop from photo of gulls . It'most eastern recovery of BHG ringed on Jakusevec :) Distance is ~2083km.

Nice one :) 

Ringing YLG

Finally new post :)

Last week Tea (thanx for photos), Vedran, Zec & I went colour ringing Yellow Legged Gulls at the colonies around Mljet National Park.

In two days we put colour rings on 206 pulli :)

 Best number for years for Mljet.

On our way there we stopped on Neretva delta to check the breeding Kentish Plover. The bird we were watching throughout May was not present any more. I believe that the main reason for this were friking kite-surfers that were surfing around this small islet and resting on it.

Tommorrow I'm going to check one of the BHG breeding colonies and check few places where Whiskered Tern bred last year..

Shags

Yesterday we had a great day ringing Shags on small islands around Mljet.

13 colour-ringed pulli is much more then we hoped:) We tought that we'll find mostly nests with eggs..

Most of them were realy big and almost ready to fly so we calculated that these egg were laid in December:)

In few weeks we'll come again to check the nest that were empty now.

Majice Mljet

Evo majci

boje:

MUSKE VARIJANTE:

* GALEB -tamno plava

* JEŽ - crna   i narančasta

* MUNGOS- crna   i narančasta

* ŠIŠMIŠ - crna i tamno plava

* ŠKANJAC - tamno plava i  narančasta

* VRANAC - crna   i bijela    

 velicine M-XXL

ZENSKE VARIJANTE:

* GALEB- (MODRA)

* JEŽ -(CRNA)

* MUNGOS - (SMEĐA)

* ŠIŠMIŠ - LILA)

* ŠKANJAC - (SMEĐA)

* VRANAC - (BIJELA)

velicine S-XL

Swan ringing on Šoderica, Donja Dubrava & Varaždin

After problems with car ( I pour wrong type of gasoline) we managed to get to Šoderica at noon.. The lake was frozen and the swans were hungry:)

We managed to catch 15 swans. One of then had Italian neck collar. It was not well glued so we add some glue. That swan didn't have any metal ring so we put croatian..

On our way back we went to Donja Dubrava & Varaždin were we caught all together 16 more swans..



All in all very nice day with 31 swans ringed and more then 50 different rings read:)