luka & ringing

Thursday, 18 November 2010

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

Tuesday, 9 November 2010

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

Monday, 8 November 2010

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

Friday, 29 October 2010

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..

Wednesday, 27 October 2010

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 :)

Thursday, 24 June 2010

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.

Monday, 7 June 2010

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.