Shags 2013 part 1

Last weekend Lori, Boris and I went to Mljet to ring first part of Shag chicks.
It was very successful weekend. We visited biggest colony in National Park and there were at least 10 active nest:) We managed to ring 11 chicks and (finally) one adult! The weather was really good.

While waiting for Shag to show in one hole they were nesting for years, to my big surprise Peregrine flew out of it:) And then comes the star of the day. Peregrine went out to fight Lanner!!! It is first record for the species in the  Mljet NP!!

End of season

Nice day to close the season with 151 gulls ringed.

But it wasn't as smooth as it sounds. When we came there was a lot of activities on the tip.  Compactor , bulldozer, trucks.. I agreed a place where we could put the net. Only problem is that we were firing in the wind. We set the net very quickly! Team is working very well! Everyone knows what to do so we were ready to shoot after less than half an hour. We didn't wait long to take a first catch.

set net

Vedran checking safe zone

 Net didn't spread evenly so it wasn't big catch, around 40 BHGs. While part of the team started ringing, others reset the net. They were really quick, around 15 minutes for reset :)

Second catch was better but still net didn't spread as nice as usual.. around 60 birds; BHGs and 1 YLG. We agreed to wait big gulls for 3rd catch, if possible a LBBG(s). Hour later we had  LBBG  in catching area and I took first clean shoot. We didn't catch it because wind was strong so the net was falling for ages.. around 50 birds; 4 YLGs in it.. All  in all 145 BHG and 5 YLG. Nice number to end the season. I will sum the winter in next days and put numbers in one of next posts. I know now that we ringed around 1080 birds this winter:)

While we were packing the stuff there was one LBBG walking around the car so i decided to catch it with a rope. I didn't succeed, but I did catch one YLG.

Few YLGs

advanced 2nd winter?

3rd winter

In the end I must say the this winter the team enlarged greatly and now we have around 10 people every time. Plus we divided jobs between  us so everything is really fast, everybody knows it's part and I think we are ready for next big season! Next year we can attack 2000 :)

It's over! go home! :)
See you in November

First recovery of Croatian ringed LBBG

I was really surprised when I received an email from Michal Porteš. He photographed the first ever LGGB ringed in Croatia and found abroad :). It was orange 60BH I ringed last winter during the IGM and found in Vysoka Pec, Ustrecky, Czech Repoublic some 560km from ringing site :)

Here's the photo

On Friday I went to Jakuševec to see if there are enough gulls to go to the tip..

There were at least 15 LBBG there..

Update on last Sunday

Here are few more Toni's photos that show all the jam in the catching area.

Here you can see how many gulls net jumps over :(

One more photo that I got from Strax from Novi Sad

Yesterday he and Fabijan(same one that was in Zagreb on Sunday) were reading rings yesterday on NS rubbish tip and among Croatian rings they read they took a photo of this one. Funny thing is that this bird was ringed last Sunday(two days before) on Jakuševec(more than 300km eastern) by Fabijan:)

My friends we did it!

Oh what a day!

Last weekend I had Fabijan From Novi Sad as a guest and was under lot of pressure to show him successful catch.. But I couldn't imagine it would be this good!

LBBG without ring..We gotta do something about it.

CG with (I think ) Polish ring

We were at the tip at 7 30. Until 8 15 the tip was clear and we set the net. It looked promising and some 15 minutes later we got first catch with around 110 gulls:). The extraction was very good and fast. While Toni, Filip and Kruno were resetting the net others started ringing. There were at least 4 people ringing at any moment and everything started looking the way I would like it to be.. Everybody is busy and thing are going smoothly.. After it was finished we reset the net and before noon we had another catch with around 90 gulls.. Now started to look as we could brake the record from last year and it really happened with third catch and 60 more gulls :)
We only ringed 2 species: 207 BHG and 53 YLG. But total was 260 gulls ringed!!!!

Among them we catched 1 YLG ringed as a chick on Island of Zecevo near  Senj in 2006 and BHG from Lithuania . It was 2w bird and I'll put ringing details when I get them.

We reringed it because it had very worn color ring and no metalring

I don't have much photos because we were worknig all the time:) I'll put some when I get from other people.

With this catch we have 930 gulls ringed this winter. I hope we'll have one more catch in two weeks to pass 1000 birds this winter.

I would like to thank whole crew for great job done and Maciej for most of the photos.