YLG pulli ringing part 1

Just a quick post.
My son is 5 weeks old and I don't have much time for this blog, as you may noticed :)

Last weekend we went to Mljet to ring YLG pulli. The weather was really shity . It was raining for half Saturday and in second part of the day we ringed some 80 pulli. Not much but better than nothing :)

I borrowed a tele-lens so this time I have a bit better photos :)

Next week we'll ring some more pulli on colonies around Poreč and try to catch some gulls on Poreč rubbish tip.

Recoveries of BHGs with white ring starting with "S"

I would just like to say to all of you who are reporting my BHG that I'm reciving your recoveries, but have lots of work at the moment with my phd, and moving to another flat, and having a baby in a month or so and more than 600 recoveries from the IGM.

So please, have some patience. I'll answer all of them and hope to get into routine of answering in day or two soon.

Cheers

Luka

Shags part 1

As I'm moving to another flat, I neglected both ringing and blog for some time..

Last weekend we were at Mljet looking for Shags.

It was very windy, but was really nice to get on the islands again.

On the Island we found 20 old nests 2 years ago there were at least 4 nests with eggs and at least 4 with chicks :)

It is very nice as last year there was only one last year.
We ringed 5 chicks and rest we'll ring in the beginning of April.

On our way back we were alone on the ferry:)

IGM 2012

What a great weekend!!!

It started very shy on Thursday with only two slide shows. It started for real on Friday morning. It was much easier to me after I held my talk :) It was a really crowded day with 12 talks.

 Saturday was nice. We got to Jakuševec at 8 o clock and then I realized I'm in trouble :)

There were milions of gulls with rings:) I think that in those 4 hours participants of IGM read at least 200 rings. It's gonna be lot's of work putting it all in computer .. Just before the lunch Dutch guys with Albert and Chris discovered an adult Heuglin's Gull :)
Saturday was reserved for ringing talks and it ended with traditional Croatian dinner.

The big day was Sunday!
It didn't start that well as for first 3 hours we couldn't make any catch. It way past 11 when we decided to take a shot at 3 Caspians. Paul was behind the trigger as I was a bit tensed about the organization and all.. It was a catch of 11 birds but 2 Caspians were cought :)

While we were processing the birds, Zec and Kruno reset the net and we were soon ready for the next one..

It didn't take long for gulls to come again and decent numbers of big gulls was in the catching area. And then came the star of the day... Adult fuscus was getting into the catching area. After some safety problems Paul took the catch and we got first ever LBBG for Croatia!!!!

The totals  were amazing.
Black-headed Gull - 32
Common Gull - 2
Herring Gull - 3
Yellow-legged Gull - 29
Caspian Gull - 11
Lesser Black-backed Gull - 1

After all the trouble it was one of the greatest day at rubbish tip ever!!

I would like to thank all the people for the wonderful time we had!

Few more photos

Greatest Sunday ever!

I think I was one of very few people in Croatia that was happy with this weather! Ok maybe few people from ringing group..


We got to Jakusevec at 7 and the net was set at 8..

Zec furling the net

 I knew we won't have time for coffee but some of us didn't.. I took first shoot at 805 :) birds were extracted at 825:)

Nice catch around 120 birds. Even more fun was 9 Common Gulls :) It was the same number as last year on Totovec :)

There were 2 interesting canus in this catch

First huge one that I'm pretty sure is heinei .  (bill to feathers = 37,6mm, tarsus= 56,0mm, wing=397mm, bill at gonys= 12,2mm, head+bill=99,0 mm )

one in my left hand

Second one with pale eye and only pitch of white on P9 (bill to feathers = 32,6mm, tarsus= 55,6mm, wing=369mm, bill at gonys= 11,4mm, head+bill=92,3 mm )

any ideas?

Also in this round we had our first Polish BHG for this year :) Bird from last year with only metal (FN 92.753). We added color ring :)

It was around 11 when we were over with first catch so we decided to take one more.

Gulls were not that tame as the first time but did settled after some 20 minutes and we took another one.. again nice catch around 120 birds with few canuses:)

While we were ringing Zec and Kruno were putting equipement in the car. After they were over Zec went around trying to read some rings.. After some time I asked him was there any and he said just two of Croatian yellow rings. One was starting with 2L3C and is probably cach from Lithuania and another was  PHPU so it was Polish , the question is where it was used:) .

So everything was over at 1400 and totals are :

226 BHG
16  CG

total 242
Biggest catch ever :)

almost forgot :) 243rd bird ringed, my first rook 

wintering white stork 

Freezing Sunday

We got to Jakuševec at 7. It was FREEEEEZING. The temperature was around -2C but the wind was horrible.
After 3 people have withdrawn it was only 4 of us. It was really a small team.

The net was set at 8:20 and it was obvious that we won't have much time to drink coffee while waiting for gulls..It took them less than 10 minutes to find the bait in the catching area. We had lot's of air traffic and we took a first clear shoot.

It looked very nice, especially for such a small team :)

97 BHG
2  CG
6 YLG
105 total :)

One of the BHG had very worn Hungarian aluminium ring so we replaced it with new Croatian and added white one.

It was first time this winter we saw almost black-headed BHGs.

At 11 we were already over with really good result: 105 gulls colour ringed. We were frozen and decided to call it a day :)

Next weekend it should be much colder, even -11C. Hope we'll get bigger team and get many many birds :) and that it won't be windy..

Great Sunday at Jakuševec

The forcast was correct. It was 5C and rising.. :(

The net was set at 8:43 ans it didn't took the gulls long to come :)
After last week experience and waiting until 13 for first shot I decided to take a catch as soon as it's clear.
It happened after some 20 minutes and it was clear that it's finally first catch over 100 gulls ever :)

It took us some time to free the birds and we were happy to see first canus for this winter. At the end there were 5 1st winter canus :)  All ringed by Vedran :)

Also there were 7 big gulls ; 5 YLGs and 2 misteries again. And 109 BHGs .
One of the adult YLG had very worn aluminium and colour ring so we replace it. I couldn't find it in my excell tables so we'll know tomorrow when Jelena send me ringing data.. It was ringed May26th 2006 on small island Galun near Krk as pullus by me :) Only one recovery before Jakuševec: June 16th 2010 Kolan, Island of Pag, Croatia..

During ringing we had few drops of rain that were not mentioned in the forecast but we managed to survive :)

Recruitment of  new vampires

All in all it was really nice catch for such a worm day..

Here are misteries:
45BH very dark bird, with dark underwing and streaked rump

47BH big cachinnans male?