Catching gulls on Strand Beach at Novi Sad

On 26.01.2014 I went to Strand Beach to catch BHGs. Good thing is that I have more people interested in gulls and helping to catch and ringed them. First catch was around 14:00 with more than 70 birds. After that first catch we pull the clap net three more times and finished the day with 157 cr BHGs, one bird was ringed in Hungary. Best day so far!


On 28.01.2014 We again visit Strand Beach to catch gulls. In first catch was 60 birds and in second was more than 40 but we have problem with one side of net and more than 30 gulls escaped :(, so only 10 gulls was left under the net. After all we had good two days.

Few photos of both days:

Me, Drasko and Ducky

Specially-trained duck for attracting gulls listening instructions

Magdalena taking photos

YAZZ 

YBRA

 Ringed in Hungary

 Kaca with her first BHG

When we finished ringing of gulls we catched few swans and ringed them, one of them had problem with fishing line and hook.

I would like to thank Magdalena and Kaca for photos.

Belgrade garbage dump

During the IWC we go to Belgrade garbage dump to count gulls. We came to late, around 11:00 anyway I took the opportunity to catch gulls. We set up clap net very quickly and put bread to attract birds to catching area, but they were not very interested in bread, winter again is mild and it was some 15 degrees C, so we managed to cought only 20 BHGs but one was ringed in Czech Republic with metal ring as chick last year so I added colour ring.

We will definitely come back to Belgrade garbage dump, there was more than 15000 BHGs but not so many large gulls, most of them were Caspian gulls.

I would like to thank Dragan Simic for photos.

New season

New season didn't start well. I have problem with entering to Novi Sad garbage dump, so now I catch gulls on other places. I managed to catch 6 BHGs at night on Danube river but it is to windy so it is impossible to continue this type of action with success...

Savo with his first BHG

Two more from Germany and first one in Netherlands

Last year I had three observation of one BHG ringed with metal ring in Novi Sad and found in Germany (Frankfurt), but  YARN   and  YARX  are my first cr BHGs found in Germany one in far north and one in south part.

 YARN  was seen on 16.07.2013 by Olaf and Barbara Ekeloef and  YARX  was seen on 09.07.2013 by Franz Kretschmar both birds were ringed on 06.03.2013 in Novi Sad.

View YARN in a larger map

View YARX in a larger map

09.08.2013  YASB  was seen in  Netherland by Jaap van der Linden, the bird was ringed on 06.03.2013 in Novi Sad.

This was my first one in Netherlands :)

View YASB in a larger map

Spring time

On 10.05.2013 we went to count nests to colonies on Palic lake, last year here were nesting around 1500 pairs of BHGs and about 150 Med gulls. This year we count 850 nests of BHG and 43 of Med gulls.

Otto and Anna counting nests

In first few minutes of this video you can see last year situation on the Palic lake island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sykyTqVD28c&t=190


So in a next few days I started to prepare rings and i was really hoping to use them all.

But then came rain and it was raining more than 3 weeks, so on 8th June we went to ringing chicks and we didn't belive that we find to many gulls. Rain and cold wheather came in wrong time. So there was no adult or pulli Med gulls. We catch around 25 BHG chicks on island and other chicks Armin and Ferenc catch on water, while me and Tamas ringing. At the end it was ringed only 53 BHGs, hope the next year will be better for breeding gulls.