Natural Selection

Last night I had an hour to do some birding. I was aware that there had been a Fylde Bird Club meeting there on Tuesday which hadn’t seen much, but it’s the best site close to home. It was pleasant enough with a couple of Greenshanks and a flock of around 70 Black-tailed Godwits over west.

Eventually I settled into a groove of checking the gulls for unusual species, or more likely Darvic ringed birds. Tom Parkinson had seen a local dark green ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull at the FBC meet, and that would be better than nothing. Nothing however was what it looked like I would get.

Eventually a Lesser Black-backed Gull appeared which was ringed, and the ring looked pale. It was soon clear that it was last year’s bird, assumed on probability to be white N:M5H but rather screwed up by me at the time and identified on probability. There was no doubt this time though.

A reminder of the background or if you’re new to this story – this bird was taken into care when found in distress on a Malaga beach. After a month or so in the care of a fabulous large gull rescuer called Monika it was released in May 2023. It wasn’t reported again until I saw it at Skippool last July.

Rescuing and rehabilitation of gulls is topical at this time of year. It’s also controversial at times, whether to intervene with grounded chicks in particular. This bird though is a clear cut example of the benefits, it would presumably have succumbed but was then able to return to Britain and may well now be breeding somewhere not too far away.