A somewhat delayed post, but I thought it would be wise to inform you about my most recent visit to the landfill at Eirol (February 5). At arrival there at 9:15am an incredible number of gulls was present, but it was still too foggy to read any rings. After about an hour or so, the fog cleared up and I managed to read 50 rings until about 15:00. These rings had been applied in the following countries: The Netherlands (16 x), Guernsey (13 x), UK (12 x), Germany (2 x), Belgium (2 x), France (2x), Denmark (1 x), Iceland (1 x) and Norway (1 x).
Another mountain under construction...
Two ringed LBBG's of which I can't recall the codes; dirt made the reading of many rings impossible, but at least the bird on the right could be traced back to David Sowter (UK)
WHITE 1EH, from Gloucester (UK), where it is also a regular landfill visitor, I believe.
A packed stadium
One of many tibia combos that have been applied in the southwest of The Netherlands, by Roland-Jan Buijs.
BLACK J0VU, all the way from Norway
The last half hour of my visit was dedicated to an inspection of the present gull carcasses at the site, in particular the ones that were laying at the bottom of the pit (as the landfill only recently opened, a large part of the base of the dump site still consist of bare sand). Here I inspected the remains of 47 Lesser Black-backed Gulls and 12 Black Headed Gulls.
The bottom of a landfill; always worth a visit!
Two metal rings were found; one from the BTO – London, which came from the leg of an adult LBBG that deceased a few months ago, but more interestingly: I also found a metal Lisboa (Portugal) ring around only a single tarsus and foot:
As this particular ring appeared to have the same size as those that are applied on the larger gulls in NW Europe, my first thought was that it would belong to an unfortunate landfill gull. However, there was something suspicious about this situation: the tarsus was obviously too short for a Larus and the orange leg color too different from the leg colors of the gulls present at the site. Additionally, the leg and ring appeared to have been regurgitated by a gull (it was laying among many other gulls’ dietary remains), and as far as I know cannibalism does occur regularly among gulls, but not at the landfill sites I visit. And finally, the ring number appeared a bit too familiar to me... This all made me suspect that this ring had not been applied on a gull, but something else instead. Exactly on what species this ring had been put and how it ended up on the landfill will be presented and discussed in another post soon…
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