Gull-rings around Aveiro, Portugal (September 11, 2014)

Gulls arriving at the Eirol landfill. We managed to read 64 rings between 07:35 - 13:15, all on Lesser Black-backed Gulls. Roughly 6000 gulls were present at the site. Many birds left the site early, presumably due to the lack of garbage being delivered to the open dump.






Xavega fishery at Praia da Vagueira. 5 rings were read between 14:00 -15:15, all on Lesser Black-backed Gulls. 150 gulls were present, primarily LBBG.




Blue 23 at Praia da Vagueira, ringed in the southwest of The Netherlands.




Red VB1.T at Praia da Vagueira. Ringed at a landfill site in Greater London, UK.




Reading rings at Porto de Pesca, Gafanha da Nazaré. 8 rings were read there, 5 on LBBG, 3 on Yellow-legged Gulls. Gulls not counted.




White HC, from the southwest of The Netherlands (photo: Pedro Moreira).




Subadult Yellow-legged Gull R:R8T; ringed in France (photo: Pedro Moreira).

Lack of gull rings leads to the reading of a Limosa spec.

Today a poorly scheduled, but sunny, visit was made to the fishing harbor of Gafanha da Nazaré, near Aveiro. Due to a low tide and little fishing activity not many gulls were present, only about 750 or so. A few thousand were roosting on the sand banks of the Ria, but these were out of the range of my scope. Only seven rings were read, which were applied in Denmark (2), The Netherlands (2), Guernsey (1), Southwest England (1) and France (1).

LBBG YELLOW E222/E from Norman van Swelm (The Nethelands)

BLACK 1AK2 was the only LBBG from Guernsey that I could find; the others will most likely be hanging around on the landfill.

   

Immature LBBG GREEN Y.BFX, also from The Netherlands.

 Peter Rock's BLACK J+J, all the way from around Bristol and now behind bars in Portugal.

After this rather unsatisfying visit I thought it would be a good idea to inspect the situation at the University of Aveiro. In one of the fresh water ponds I ran into a marked Mallard male (89/S/89), which was the only marked duck among the 40 Mallards that I found. At the nearby mudflats of the Ria de Aveiro I found barely any gulls within my scope’s range, but instead I found about 2000 Limosa specs. After scoping out about 15 of these I ran into this ringed individual. No idea what subspecies, where it’s from or who ringed it, but I’ll true to figure this out. After taking a second photo of this bird, thankfully all of them took off so I did not have to deal with more of those tiny plastic ring codes.