Natural Selection

Regular readers will know I like to check the gulls on the Leven Estuary at Greenodd for ringed gulls when passing on the A590. I was in South Cumbria yesterday taking a family member to a medical appointment and stopped on the way.

I quickly picked up an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull – green N:76B. This was definitely a new bird to me. As it was an adult I hoped there might be a bit of a life history. There wasn’t:

I know I’ve said this before but the fact these birds can go five years without a single sighting shows how you can make a difference to our knowledge by reporting any birds you see. Last Friday I had another Lesser Black-backed Gull here which you can just about see below was N:P59.

This one turned out to be interesting because the only other sighting after ringing was this March on the French coast, presumably on the way back from wintering further south.

Heading back yesterday evening I was given permission by Jane to have another look through the gulls. This time I read two Black-headed Gulls, both had been ringed at Bowness-on-Windermere, with 2J64 being the more interesting one.

I’ve included the map of foreign recovered locally ringed Black-headed Gulls above to compare and contrast. It appears this bird breeds or has bred at Leighton Moss, and lives its entire life in the vicinity of Morecambe Bay. The differing life strategies of these birds is of interest to me, some of the same species moving hundreds of miles each year and others staying in their own backyard.

The other one was a bit less revealing:

To be in South Cumbria this early in the autumn it probably also nests nearby, but maybe not…

To report green ringed larger gulls locally go to http://nwgulls.org.uk, whilst for blue ringed local Black-headed Gulls go to https://waterbirdcolourmarking.org and tab through to the BHG page.