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:)

Great Sunday Frustration

What seemed to be a perfect day at my dump ended up with 6 hours of waiting and no gulls in the trap area!

It was -9C and it was really chilly but gulls were very careful and didn't spent much time at the dump. Like they ate enough yesterday when the temperature was few degrees above zero..

This one was shot in this 6 hours of waiting..Argh!!!

Rings are rolled for Sunday

According to weather forecast it should be snowing in Zagreb until -saturday and onSunday it should be -10C ..

Sounds like perfect weather for catching gulls:)

 

 cell phone photo:(

Swan ringing : Varazdin and Donja Dubrava

Today we had very nice catch of swans : more than 30 new neck collared birds:)

Swan jackets makes your life much easier if you want to ring more swans:) Thanx Kane!

Here are some of the recoveries we had today:

 

 

 this last one you can also see here it's very old Hungarian ring(more than 10 years). Metal ring was blank. We caught it and replaced metal ring with Croatian one. Originally this ring was yellow(?).

This must be THE biggest Mute Swan I ever ringed:)

Just got data from Eddie Fritze who "read" the blank ring from this huge swan. It's Croatian ring and the bird was ringed  by Andrija Lesinger in a few km radius on 22/12/1998. I think it's the oldest Swan wearing croatian ring:) Now he has new ring and collar and can produce many more recoveries:)

Great Sunday on Jakusevec

Yesterday we had a great catch on Jakusevec rubbish dump:)
We ringed 110 BHGs, 6 YLG, 2 Common Gulls and (Croatia's first ever ringed) Herring Gull.

 

BHG with Hungarian ring that we caught yesterday. Beside it we had one with BRATISLAVA ring( I got recovery data for this one. It was ringed as pull in Piestany on 31/5/2004).

I don't think any comment is necessary here...

 

 

This is the first HG ringed in Croatia, and as we don't have any experience with it in hand we'd like to have someone comment on it. According to some people this should be one of the northern birds..
Measurements:  bill: 57,7; bill depth at base: 20,1; bill depth at gonys: 19,6 and tarsus 75,0..

This one is more confusing for me. It's Common Gull, but what ssp?
When I got it in my hands it was much bigger than other Common Gulls I ringed.
Measurments:  bill: 36,0; bill depth at base: 11,6; bill depth at gonys: 10,7 and tarsus 59,3..
henei? Everything fits except tarsus which is too big...
Comments?



I'd like to thank Tea Gabud for these  photos.