Black-headed Gull ringing, Shotton

I was lucky enough to get an invite to Tata Steel at Shotton recently with the Merseyside ringing group to ring Black-headed Gulls at the raft nesting colony on their lagoons. Thus colony had been previously hit badly by avian flu but seems to have bounced back with a recce a couple of weeks ago showing good numbers of nests and newly hatched young. 

A great if noisy afternoon where we ringed a total of 170 Black-headed Gull chicks and colour ringed 150 of those with black darvics with a four number numeric code.

Black-headed Gulls are on the amber list of birds of conservation concern in the context of a UK breeding species. Many more spend the winter here from Europe but its important to monitor UK colonies such as these and collect data such as juvenile survival rates and movements to help monitor and protect populations.

Although most of the pairs had well grown chicks close to fledging there were still some late nesters still with clutches of eggs. Hopefully they'll be successful but as with all colony nesting birds there is safety in numbers and once the older chicks have fledged the adults will leave the colony leaving the late ones more vulnerable to predation.

The rafts are also home to a colony of Common Terns and they also seem to be doing well. We'll go back to ring them later.