North Thames Gull GroupStudying the Gulls of Essex Landfill Tips

Ockendon - 16/02/2019: We have undertaken a test at a new tip a Ockendon just near the M25 today and after a long wait with no lorries of food we hit the jackpot with a large vehicle full of food. This resulted in a really quick catch of just under 400 birds. Given we had a time limit on the tip and we were under pressure with a large catch we ended up having to let about 50 birds go but in the end managed to process 323 birds. Interesting catches included Norwegian, Danish and a York tip Herring gulls along with three of our own birds one which is nine years old.

Pitsea - 13/03/2018: Well that is it for Pitsea. The end has come as we knew it would. It has gone exactly the same as Rainham and the lack of food waste very squarely equals lack of birds. For our last session we had to work very hard for just over 100 birds in three catches. The first catch just after 10am was reasonable with a total of 83 birds caught. Giving the reasonably inexperienced team the opportunity to look closely at gull ages and get their hand in. There was one interesting bird in the catch which both Rich Cope and myself initially thought was a good Caspian Gull under the net. On close examination of the bird it was clear it had conflicting features and we strongly believe this bird was a Herring x Caspian hybrid. The bird was colour ringed and it will be interesting to see what this bird is called as if seen in the field. If we could have replicated that catch two more times it would have been good but it was not to be. The second catch was a poor decision by myself as I could not see some of the catching area and thought we had a good number of birds. Safety was completely clear so I took the decision to fire only to find most of the small flock was actually outside the catching area. The third catch was a deliberate decision because hardly any birds were coming into the catching area. However, when we had a fantastic full adult Med Gull land in the catching area it seemed a fitting thing to finish with a good bird and take the small catch just for the Med Gull (much to the delight of Mark Stanley who ended up ringing it!). It was interesting to see the behaviour of the gulls and at no point did we have good numbers of gulls in the catching area - with little food birds picked and left the catching area very quickly making any catch of a large number of birds just not possible. So at the end we must give a massive thank you to all the staff past and present at Pitsea going right back to the Cleanaway days who have supported and facilitated our work on site. The group finishes with a grand total of 46,224 new birds ringed and 24,105 retraps, controls and colour ring sightings over the 34 years of field work. In the latter years many of these have been colour ringed and we hope to continue to get data and sightings on many of these birds in the coming years. It would also be remiss not to thank all of the team members and people that have come out to help on catch days and stood in the freezing cold or up to their ankles in mud (or extracted birds from even worse substances!). Without the commitment of such dedicated ringers and ornithologists this project just would not have been possible - I thank you all as I know Brian Manton would have also done so – my final thanks go to Brian himself for being the instigator of gull catching at Pitsea, Rainham and Mucking landfill sites and for training me to carry on the work which now comes to a close. If we do find another tip in the near future we may undertake some attempts at catches but I strongly suspect this will not be the case with all UK landfills now only receiving commercial waste and not household which contains the food which has supported these gull populations since the tips opened in the 1950’s.

Catch 1

Catch 2

Catch 3

Pitsea - 17/01/2018: A first session after the news of the tip closure in March. This may be the last session although we are planning two more before the end of the winter if the tip are agreeable to us holing a couple more catches to use up our last colour rings. A very windy day on occasion I was close to cancelling the session. However, with good numbers of Great Black-backs on the tip it was worth carrying on. After a couple of hours wait for a vehicle with decent food on it we received an arctic with dustcart waste and a lot of food. We then had far too many gulls for the small and inexperienced team. I had ensured waste was not too close to the net for safety reasons and to limit the catch. After a few lifts and some of the gulls thinning out an opportunity presented itself and a catch was able to be taken. Amazingly our first ever Russian control Great Black-backed was a great highlight amongst the 178 birds caught.