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 :)