More Lesser Black-backs...

Heavy rain all day gave us an opportunity to go for more Lesser Black-backed gulls in the city center of Bergen. When it rains few people are out feeding and the gulls get desperate for food. Christian checked the conditions in the middle of the day and could report that the Lesser Black-backed gulls was behaving like pigeons and seemed to be very easy to catch. After work we decided to catch as may as possible and we was really satisfied to get hold of five 1Y's in just one hour. These numbers brings us to a total of 9 adult, 11 1Y and 3 pullus of 'urban' Lesser Black-backed gulls.

JC0K a large Lesser Black-backed male

JC1K the second Lesser Black-backed 1Y we ringed this year. It is still present and will possibly be for a week or two.

Last year we also did September catching of 1Y Lesser Black-backed gulls together with Frode Falkenberg. Frode together with Alf Tore Mjøs is probably the two ornithologists that have done most gullwatching in Bergen and are together the sole reason for why Bergen has been called the gull capital of Norway (will come back to their discoveries in a later blogpost). Anyway, last years September catching with Frode actually started the work on urban gulls in Bergen. Much because of the unbelievable good results our six birds equipped with plastic rings produced. During the autumn and winter we had four readings in four different countries, spanning from Denmark in north to Morocco in south. A result showing the increased recovery rate the plastic rings can give.