Photographed by Zac HinchcliffeAfter finding the Herring Gull and Black-Headed Gull bearing Darvics at seperate locations, once I was back in Bangor I was keen to get down to Bangor harbour to have a look and see if there were any more ringed gulls.. Several trips were made at the end of January and a few at the beginning of February with some interesting results..
Myself and Zac spent more than 16 hours down in the harbour trying to read the rings that 3 Black-Headed gulls were wearing! Several packets of chips and many photos later, we had solved their identities.. We managed to obtain the full codes of 2 of the birds but the 3rd bird eluded us!
7T69449 - Brussels
ST239892 - Finland
3.61-.--- - Holland
Photographed by Zac Hinchcliffe
I am not going to be defeated by the last bird so in the next few weeks when I actually have some time spare, I will be down in the harbour in search of that gull and its ring sequence!
During the last few weeks there has been a clear lack of posting to the blog, which is mainly due to the increased workload at university and not enough free-time.. Since my last post about the intriguing sighting of the Short-eared Owl in Bangor Harbour, my day-to-day life has been somewhat rather busy..
In the mean time, this bird wasn't ringed in Britain and so has travelled quite some distance.. This message is aimed at anyone who is a bird ringer abroad - if you read or follow my blog, have you ringed this Herring gull and if so, please contact me through the blog.. cheers!
The other Darvic that I read was at Newton Park Lake at Newton-Le-Willows in Manchester, on 23/1/11. I have to admit, this was a bit of a surprise find! I had been ringing with Kane for the past few days and after being dropped off at the station, I had literally just missed my train home, so a quick look in the park opposite the station was in order, equppied with some left-over butties, this is what greeted me..
It makes you wonder what else is lurking in urban parks and other gull flocks?! 
Unfortunately, the weather for last week was forecast to be very wet and windy. The weather forecasters actually got it right for once, so we were in for a wet and windy weekend. Although the weather for the weekend turned out to be alot worse than I originally expected. Unfortunately, this weekend was SCAN Ringing Groups {Shropshire, Conwy and Anglesey} last cannon-netting weekend of this winter and amazingly, after our catch at the weekend - SCAN Ringing Group has successfully ringed just over 404,045 birds since it was set-up!
This weekend I was joined by mates Kane Brides, Craig Brookes and Ciaran Hatsell who drove up to Bangor to give us a hand over the weekend. Throughout Saturday, we began to deal with the fact that the rain wasn't going anywhere. So with a break in the rain, we set 2 cannon-nets quickly and efficiently on different beaches so to maximise our disturbance to the site as the tide was on it's way in. During the morning, we fired both of the nets; resulting in 16 Shelduck, 1 Wigeon, 1 Redshank and 5 Turnstone being caught.
Spending time on ageing the Shelducks enabled us to truley appreciate the beauty of these over-looked wildlfowl.
My warden in my flat at university, came along as I had promised him that he could take some photographs for his course and to hold some birds during the weekend.. Hamzar Yassin has had an interest in birds for a few years now, but bringing him along to this weekend, he truley appreciated the sheer beauty of the birds and it was great to show him the birds in the hand that he had been watching during his time at Bangor..
Huge thanks to Steve and Rachel for yet another great weekend's cannon-netting. More thanks to Hamzar Yassin for doing all the driving and transporting us to the sites. Thanks to Kane Brides, Craig Brookes and Ciaran Hatsell for making Saturday night an interesting night out in Bangor, all of us were pretty drunk, but we can't not forget young Zac..