Natural Selection

After dropping Jane at the hairdressers I stayed fairly close by to be able to pick her up when she was done. So gulls were the order of the day – at Stanley Park and Skippool.

I was hoping for some foreign ringing recoveries in the park, but both the birds I saw were from the north west scheme. The bird pictured above with only a metal ring was caught at the park several years ago before the Darvic colour rings were used. The other bird 2J52 was originally ringed elsewhere and appears to have nested in Lincolnshire, but certainly favours the park in winter these days.

Another bird 2B89 was ringed at the Park last winter with no sightings in the interim. Diverting briefly from gulls the long staying young Goosander was out of the water for a time.

At Skippool as hoped there were a few gulls to work through. One of the first ones I saw had a white Darvic. It was soon obvious it was one I hadn’t had before.

Whilst the bird is clearly in water in the above photo as the tide dropped what was apparently the whole ring was exposed and I submitted white MT3 to the Danish scheme organiser. He responded incredibly promptly to say he hadn’t used that sequence. I supplied a couple of pictures and he confirmed it wasn’t his and suggested it must be JMT3 and a Norwegian bird. It could be that the bottom of the ring had cracked and broken off, as this does happen. It remains to be seen if the Norwegian ringers are happy it is definitely JMT3.

Whilst in contact with Kjeld from Denmark I asked about a bird from late last year at Preston Dock I hadn’t heard back on (regular blog readers may remember me saying details were still awaited some time ago). He sent me the life history which was interesting in a couple of respects. Firstly I had forgotten I had seen the bird eight years previously, which was perhaps understandable but normally I am good with recall. Secondly it clearly isn’t one of the birds that waits for handouts at the car park, its appearances being erratic over the years.

So don’t assume every ringed bird you see has recently been reported, it often isn’t the case.