Common Terns around the Croatia

Attempt 1


During last 10 days we went to ring 3 Tern colonies. First one was on Island of Mljet where there is one pair breeding for more than 10 years.. This pair hatched 3 chicks this year :) I put the metal rings on when I was ringing YLGs but their legs were to small to put colour ring. I was hoping that the chicks  will not be able to fly yet when we come . When we approached the islet two parents were flying and yelling at us.. good sign.. Then two young birds started flying :( So there is one more somewhere. We got to the islet and found it :D I think it could fly but didn't know that yet :) So I colour ringed my first Common Tern :)

On our way to the Mljet we stopped at Neretva delta to check if there 's anything interesting there.. Unfortunately there were just those damn kite surfers :( I don't know how they get permits to do that in ornithological reserve but that's the way  things go here..

Attempt 2

Few days after we went to Drava river  to ring some Tern chicks. When we came to the spot we saw the river was very high and there were no Terns in the air.. It didn't looked good at all...

when we crossed the river we only found 2 Little ringed plover chicks, few LRP nests many Terns nests with cold eggs.. Something bad happened here :(
Photos by Luka Šupraha.. Thanx!

Attempt 3

We went to the Blato colony near Zagreb. I checked this colony 2 or 3 weeks ago and there was no colony on the island it was last year because it had lots of grass on it (we'll have to cut it before next season). But there were two much smaller islets with some  pairs breeding.. 

When we came yesterday the water was some 15 cm higher then last time we checked and I tought that the breeding season was a disaster :( We went to see if there are any chicks and to our surprise we managed to ring 59 chicks :))  Most of them were big enough for colour ring.. 

In conclusion  keep your eyes open for Common Terns with white rings starting with K! I know that some other guys colour ringed few Terns in the Northern Adriatic also. I hope we'll get some recoveries this year .. South Africa maybe :)

YLG in Poreč

Lorena, Zec and I were in Poreč Last week from Monday to Wednesday. On Monday we just checked the tip to see if there are any gulls and where will we place the net on Tuesday.. It looked very promising :)

On Tuesday we came to the tip at 8 30. Quick set of a small net and were ready to go. During waiting for Compacter driver to come I managed to take a photo of this 13 year old teenager that hatched few kilometers from the tip.This photo was taken with 55mm lens :)

 After some hour the compactor driver compacted the rubbish in front of the net and we had our first catch of 29 birds.

Fast processing and reset and there were already new trucks and lots of gulls waiting to be caught. Compacter driver did great job at soon there were millions of gulls in front of the net. I took a shoot on first time Zec shouted "Safe" :) Unfortunately, wind slowed the net and we only had 14 birds in the net :(   Between them there was one ringed as pullus in colony near by in 2004 :)

Here is a link to that second catch

Here are some photos of different ages of YLG .

Wednesday we went to ring YLG pulli on one of the colonies on a small island of Frzital. As we couldn't find a transport to the islet we rented one of these :

It was not a good day as the colony is often visited by tourists and gulls put their nest deep in the bush so theye're not that easy to get to..Plus good number of "pulli" were flaying allready..

All in all not that bad trip but I must come with bigger team and bigger net and do the real job on Poreč tip:)

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