Black-headed Gull - White 2APK

Despite not blogging for a couple of months, recording of colour-ringed birds has been ongoing and we have a number of reports of birds ringed outside Northern Ireland recorded here since the start of January. 

I will try to get reports of them up on the blog over the next couple of weeks.

James O'Neill recorded 2APK at the lake in Castlewellan Forest Park back at the start of January. This is the same site where we recorded a Scottish-ringed bird in January 2013 (see here) and Lithuanian colour-ringed bird in December 2013 (see here). 

We reported this latest sighting to Tom Dougall in Scotland and he confirmed that 2APK had been ringed as a chick at a colony at Moorfoot Hills, Scottish Borders in June 2015. 

Red - Moorfoot Hills, ringing site
Blue - Castlewellan, re-sighting location

Tom reported that this was the first re-sighting of this bird away from the natal colony and one of the few sightings of the 2015 cohort, which was small in size and had a poor fledging success which was attributed to poor weather around the time of hatching.

This is not the first bird from Moorfoot Hills we've recorded in NI (see here).

2APT at Antrim, February 2015
Photo by Gary Platt

Many thanks to James for his report and to Tom for his reply.