Black-head catch at Killington - Cumbria - 8th June 2011

I joined Kane Brides, Chris Bridge, Steve Christmas and Aidan (from Yorkshire) at Killington Resevoir to catch the Black-headed Gull chicks. This is an annual catch that has taken place since 2009. We arrived an hour or so early, so we stopped in Killington services where we hand caught 4 adult Black-heads (inc. one of my own, which was my first BHG!) using breakfast cereal as 'bait'! One of the main reasons for the 2011 visit was to colour-ring the birds as part of Kane and Ciaran's North West BHG study. We colour-ringed the 4 adults which left 80 rings left to use as a sample when we got into the colony.
This was my first visit to the colony and I was not expecting to ring so many birds! Between the 5 of us, we ringed 477 birds in 2 hours, which is incredible! It was an incredibly enjoying, albeit tiring, trip which was rounded off by catching another adult at the services to 'show off' our catching technique to Aiden whom had never previously ringed adult Black-headed Gulls.

(thanks to Kane for letting me us his photos from the day. I didn't fancy getting my camera wet on the crossing to the island!)