Overnight snow and thick fog was a rude awakening this morning with the snow continuing to fall heavy all day. No chance of birding and hard work walking the dogs in the deep snow with their short legs. It took me 20 minutes to get the snowballs off their legs with warm water. Plenty shoveling and playing with the dogs in the garden but otherwise climbing the walls, I,m not meant to be an indoor person.
Whilst recording yesterdays Mixenden Black Headed gull with the leg ring, showing it was from Stavanger in north Norway, I went back through my gull ring reports for the last 4 years and found that I have had sightings of 11 Black Headed gulls with coloured rings locally.
The main of my sightings came from Ogden with 9 of the 11 from there but this is only due to the fact that the gulls perch on the overflow rails so are easier to pick out than most sites. The other 2 remaining sites were Mixenden and Illingworth, the latter being an injured bird which a customer brought into the garage and was taken to Hirds vets in Halifax for recovery.
Areas where the birds were rung included :-
Saxony, SE Germany
Lithuania, Baltic Sea
Griend, Netherlands
Stavanger, North Norway
+ some of the birds coloured rings were worn so unreadable. Place of origin not known.
Other gull species with rings include :-
Herring gull , Seen at Lister Park, rung at Harewood Whin, landfill site, York.
Herring gull, seen at Leeshaw, rung at Harewood Whin, landfill site, York.
Common gull seen at Leeming, rung at Stavanger, north Norway.
LBB gull seen at Redcar Tarn, rung at Stavanger, Norway.
YL Herring gull, seen at Leeshaw, blue unreadable ring so no infomation.
Caspian gull seen at Redcar Tarn, rung at Germany.
Other species seen with rings include Barnacle Goose, Greylag goose, Pink Footed goose and Mute Swans.
Not looking good for any morning birding with thick freezing fog down and enough snow to last us until June.
BS