News

Guernsey Trip 2010: The North Thames Gull Group undertook a trip to Guernsey in May 2010 to assist Paul Veron of La Société Guernesiaise with catching gulls on Chouet Landfill on the Northern end of Guernsey. Seven members of the group made the trip to assist with the operation over what was planned to be four days of intensive catching. Sadly, the weather prevented any catches on two of the days, but an excellent total of 1008 birds were caught in 6 catches on the other two days. Over 300 colour-ring sightings were also made. Thanks to Paul Veron for organising the trip and undertaking all the hard work to gain access to the tip and arrange a great team to work with. Read more details 14-Jun-2010


RE-SIGHTING NEWS: This week we received details of two of our birds re-sighted at sea. Andreas Buchheim was in the German Bight working on offshore windfarm planning when he was able to read the colour rings on a Lesser Black-backed Gull ringed at Rainham in September 2009 and a Great Black-backed Gull ringed at Pitsea in January 2010. 30-Apr-2010


TRIP - Pitsea - 27/03/2010: A day with few gulls on site, so clearly many had moved back out to their breeding grounds in the last few weeks. With the threat of showers we took a quick early catch of only Black-headed Gulls and re-set to see what the weather did. We were lucky enough for it to hold off and a small second catch was possible. A few Mediterranean Gulls were seen but none in the catching area. 27-Mar-2010


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Aims

The aim of The North Thames Gull Group is to study the gulls making use of the landfill tips on the Essex coast of the Thames estuary, east of London.

We do this by catching the birds feeding on the waste using a cannon net, a technique requiring a special licence. The first step is setting the net.

Once captured, the birds are extracted from the net before being marked with individually numbered metal leg rings.

Whilst ringing the birds, we take measurements and study plumage characteristics. A sample are given orange colour rings which can be read with a telescope without the bird being recaptured.

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Recent Photos

  • Caspian Gull © P Roper

    Caspian Gull

    Larus cachinnans

    2nd winterEURING age 7

    Pitsea20 Feb 2010

  • Herring Gull © C W Dee

    Herring Gull

    Larus argentatus

    AdultEURING age 10

    Pitsea06 Feb 2010

Acknowledgements

The group operates with the excellent support and cooperation of Veolia Environmental Services which operates the domestic landfill sites and Pitsea and Rainham.

We are grateful to the Banbury Ornithological Society, the Essex Birdwatching Society and GlaxoSmithKline for providing funding for the colour ringing programme, and to Risto Juvaste for supplying the rings.