A rare return to one of our old stomping grounds for Mute Swan and Black-headed Gull resightings. The number of swan darvics was way down on what it used to be, but we were able to read some metal rings and even connected with a bird that we've been seeing in Windsor since 2018.
The Black-headed Gulls were numerous, thanks to recent cold conditions and this resulted in a darvic marked Polish bird at Truss's Island, three metal ringed birds from three different schemes at Datchet of which we got two complete codes and one minus the last digit. Thankfully the complete reads were both the foreign birds, one from Finland and the other the Netherlands. It took many photos to get the whole numbers.
Ending up at Windsor as rain started and the light began to fail, only one BTO marked gull was seen, but thankfully, fully recorded as the EX prefix seemed to indicate quite an old bird, confirmed by DemOn as ringed 19/03/2011 when adult and seen again almost two years later. That will make a very nice record for the ringer.
Full details on all gulls awaited.
