First BHG in Spain

This week started good with "first in" ones :) 

Few minutes ago Miguel McMinn Grivé reported a BHG with white S810 that he saw yesterday in Moll Vell de Palma de Mallorca, Palma de Mallorca, Island of Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain. It's the very first one in of our BHGs found in Spain. 

It was ringed on Jakuševec on February 22nd 2009. More than 1200km from recovery place..

 

View S810 in a larger map

First BHG in Denmark

After all thing that happend yesterday I finally got one good news. Anders  Nielsen wrote me that he saw BHG with white S146 in Caroline Amalielund, Svendborg, Funen, Denmark. The gull was ringed on Jakuševec on December 20th 2009 and doesn't have any more recoveries yet. Nice one, some 1100 km and first BHG ringed in Croatia and found in Denmark.. ever :)

Prikaži S146 na većoj karti

Cannon netting part 11

This day should have changed the history of ringing gulls at Jakuševec. The weather was fine, few degrees below zero.. It was the first time that we try to ring on Saturday. Usually we catch on Sunday because there are no trucks or people.. This time we were helped by compactor driver who was putting fresh garbage in front of the net. Driver was ok but we just couldn't agree on all things. Maybe we should try it one more time.

Position of the net( trough car window)

But this day was everything but good.. We had 4 catches, all BHGs, 2,4,13 and 5 birds respectively :( All together 24 gulls. Only good thing was one BHG with Gdansk Ring. We added white SB11 ring.

 

I think we'll go back to ringing on Sundays.. It looked like we get higher concentrations on bread and sausages.. Also it's worth mentioning that the net was not spreading the way it should so we got much smaller catching area..

Our help :)

This is what we didn't catch :(

First Baltic look like Gulls are here :) Forgot to mention it last week.

Photos of canus in Austria

 Today  Günther Wöss  sent me some photos of that canus in Wien.


Thanx!

Great news from Austria

Few minutes ago I got mail from Wolfgang Schweighofer with some recoveries. Last weekend Austrians had what they call RingReadingTour 201. They read 9 different BHGs and one CG ring. It's the first recovery of Common Gull in Austria!! Until now we had recoveries from Croatia and Italy only. 

There are some photos on their forum 

Guys also read BHG with white S056. This one has great life history :)
December 2006 ringed in Budapest, Hungary by Csortos Csaba
December 2007 metal ring read in Steyr-Mündung, Austria by Wolfgang Schweighofer
December 2009 I cought it and added white S056 on Jakuševec
August 2010 colour ring read in Maashees, Holland by Rob Voesten
and finally February 2011 Christoph Roland, Günther Wöss, Eddie Fritze and Thomas Trapela read the colour ring in Wasserpark, Floridsdorf, Wien, Austria

Good start of the weekend :)

Cannon netting part 10

Sven, Zec, Vedran and I meet at around 6:20 and went to Jakuševec. It didn't look like it's going to be very successful day because the temperature was above 0C. We found great place behind the garbage hills. We set the net around 7:30.

 After checking the circuit we went to car to have coffe while waiting.

We didn't manage to finish it when first gulls arrived.  First catch was few minutes later. some 40 BHGs.. not bad .. more than last few times :) We took the birds from the net to tents and set the net for the second shoot. At that  moment I was aware that it was bad idea to take black powder for only two shoots :(

After we set the net, Sven and I went to ring birds and Vedran and Zec were waiting in the car for the nex catch. We manage to ring 10 gulls when Vedran called me and told me that they have safety issue because as the net was close to the garbage hill gulls were walking on net and very close to the cannons.. After some time they manage to have safe catch of 16 BHGs and 4 YLGs. It was ok day with 60 new birds ringed.

Last few times we don't use sawdust to cover the floor of the tent and boxes for gulls.

If you look better it looks like this:

It's destroyed  withdrown money:)

I'd like to thank Zec for photos and you can see more of them on his flickr.

CR reading on Jakuševec

After long long time some cr reading. Today Sven and I meet around 10 and went to Jakusevec to look for some rings:)

First we stopped at the parking just in front of rubbish tip because there were more than 700 big gulls and few BHGs..  After some time we manage to read 12 Croatian YLG and 1 green Polish ring on YLG. We also saw 1 Italian but didn't manage to read it whole.. We finally found The Big Black one :) GBBG are still rare species for  Croatia.

After the parking we went to The rubbish to read some more gull rings. We managed to read 9 Croatian BHG rings, 1 Polish BHG and 5 more Croatian YLGs.

Very nice Saturday morning :) Tomorrow cannons again :)

Swans 2011, part 2

Yesterday we meet with Peter Szinai and András Kóta in Varazdin and the  plan was to search for ringed swans and gulls around Drava river. We also planned to ring swans.

We meat at Varazdin bridge at 8:20 and in two hours manage to caught 16 Mute Swans and read more than 20 rings ( mostly neck collars).


Next stop Donja Dubrava. We caught 3 Swans and Peter caught 3 more with loop :).

Next stop Šoderica. At first it seemed bad because on first "beach" we only managed to catch 3 swans, but on the other beach we reached number of 11 Swans processed :) including 2 Slovakian birds.

All in all nice day with lots of rings read. After Šoderica we all got some pizza and after that Andras and Peter went looking for more BHGs and Swans with rings.

 

Holding an old friend before taking blood samples

All photos taken by Vedran.. Thanx!

Shags on Mljet

Vedran and I went to Mljet on Monday to check Shag colonies. Last year we found more than 20 Shag nests empty in the middle of March so we wanted to check if this colony is that earlier from others in the area.. At that colony we found only one active nest with eggs and freaking mongooses. And that's the solution of our problem.. It really is problem not only rats, but mongooses at these small island :(. -After finishing the main thing we wanted we checked some other places and found 3 more places where Shags breed in the National Park and at least 6 new active nests :)

Vedran in action

This was at the end of the tunnel

 Some of the places where Shags breed

And one bird we're always happy to see :) 

Next time we'll go on Mljet in March. Hope there'll be many shag chick for ringing..

Cannon netting part 9 or maybe Jinx is gone

It started as a cold day without cloud.. At 700 when we were coming to Jakusevec gulls were allready circuling.
The net was set at 7 56.

First catch was around 9 15 and it was 20 BHGs and 1 YLG. We got 1st BHG with brown head .

Second catch, aroud 1200 had only 3 BHGs( plus one that Alex released :) ) and 11 big gulls. Most of them were YLGs, one Caspian and 2 1st winter that I'm not sure of the species.. It was cool that we caught all ages of YLGs(1st, 2nd,3rd winter and adult ).

Caspian Gull

.

1st winter without species No 1

( It was huge and remindes me of that 1st winter argentatus from February 2010 )

1st winter without species No 2

I would appreciate all comment concerning the determination of these 2 1st winter gulls.

one photo for the end of this post

Maybe it's to warm to have bigger catches.. When we were leaving it was more than 10C...

They said that the winter will return after Wednesday.. Can't wait:)

Tomorrow Vedran and I are going to Mljet to see if there are any Shags good for ringing :)