Gull rings at the Eirol landfill, Portugal. August 28, 2013

On August 28, 41 rings were read at the Eirol landfill. Starting time 7:15 and working until 13:00, under an unbearable sun. A good number of gulls were present at arrival to the site. Although many more were arriving within the following 2-3 hours, the same amount of birds departed to a nearby lake and some back to the NW, the Ria de Aveiro and nearby beaches.  I’d guess that in total there were fewer birds present than during my previous visit on 21-8, roughly 4200.

I would expect there to be more birds by now, as LBBG migration currently is well on its way, so this surprised me a little. There might be a chance that the amount of exposed waste and the amount of waste disposed at the pit has become a limiting factor for the birds. A large part of the open dump has been covered with sand recently. Fyi:  I don’t mind this. To me it’s one of the interesting factors involved in following bird populations at their main artificial food supply.

LBBG rings were applied in Guernsey (16), Great Britain (9, excluding Paul Veron’s Guerney Gulls), The Netherlands (6), France (4), Belgium (2), Germany (1), Denmark (1) and Spain (1). The only ringed YLG that I could find was ringed in Spain.

A fresh start at the Eirol landfill near Aveiro, Portugal

Today, August 21 2013, during a morning visit to the Eirol landfill near Aveiro, Portugal, 36 gull-rings were read. The number of gulls was still relatively low, I suspect about 6500, including about 6100 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, 400 Yellow-legged Gulls and only a few Black-headed Gulls. The number of white storks was impressive: well over 1000 took off and left the site around noon.

 

The only colour-ringed Yellow-legged Gull observed today.

Probably the first recorded Audouin's Gull Ichthyaetus audouinii in Eirol

In between foraging trips, the birds sleep, take a bath, preen their feathers or read a magazine

Dirty, but readable ring. One of many from Paul Veron (Guernsey)

These are not gulls, but White Storks

Around noon it became too hot for me and the gulls. Only a few hundred were still present when I left the site.

Eirol landfill, February 5, 2013

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… 

November 8 & 9: Two days of gulling and the new Taboeira landfill, Eirol

Praia da Barra beach, November 9, 2012: LBBG adult; GREEN Y.ABC, WHITE inscription (Kees Camphuysen, The Netherlands)

 Praia da Barra beach, November 9, 2012

 The new landfill site at Eirol, November 9, 2012.

LBBG adult; left: BLUE KAP, ORANGE inscription; right: metal (Peter Stewart, Britain)

Black-headed Gull; WHITE TM41, BLACK inscription, from Poland.

The new landfill site at Eirol, November 8, 2012.