Gaivotas in the mist (Taboeira landfill, March 14, 2012)

In order to read a reasonable amount of rings at the Taboeira landfill, I realized I had to get up early and be there before the kites became active and flush all the gulls. So, that’s what I did today; arriving at 6:55, even before the gulls were present at the site, and reading rings until 10:08, when the first kites flushed the birds and made further ring-reading impossible. 15 rings were read, of which 11 from Britain, 2 from Belgium, 1 from France and 1from The Netherlands. There were about 10.000 Lesser Black-backed Gulls present and the number of ring-readings could have been slightly higher if there wouldn’t have been a heavy fog present for the first two hours of observations, reducing visibility to about 50 meters.

Behind this cloud there should be a LBBG WHITE G+Y, RED inscription visible, from the hands of Peter Rock (Britain)

Taboeira landfill, March 7, 2012

Today I visited Taboeira again to see which of the known landfill gulls are still there and which new ones have appeared. By now, many of the Lesser Black-backed Gulls I resighted there this winter have made their way back to their breeding areas in NW-Europe. There are still a lot of birds present but the conditions to read off colour-rings are not getting any better; the Black Kites are getting more and more abundant and these repeatedly flush the gulls. The visit resulted in only 5 colour-ring readings; 3 Lesser Black-backed and 2 Black-headed Gulls. A record low for the location.

The birds only made a few 'touch downs' in the active dump site and refused to sit on the slopes almost completely.

The bigger dots are Black Kites; the smaller ones are gulls which are too afraid to come down. The number of kites increases during the day. As I left early today I only counted about 25 kites; employees informed me they observed about 50 kites yesterday. It seems they are still increasing...