TRIP - Pitsea - 14/01/2012: The first session of 2012 was rather difficult. Birds were very jumpy and did not want to settle. Safety issues and a single Great Black-backed Gull caused problems once the air traffic had cleared and severl lifts of all the birds meant a frustrating couple of hours wait before a catch could be taken. Fantastic work by the compactor drivers also secured a catch and without their hard work we would have drawn our first blank. Final total of 276 was very good given the circumstances.14-Jan-2012
TRIP - Rainham - 17/12/2011: A fantastic way to end the year with a really nice catch of 260 birds of which again only 7 were Black-headed. We appear to have lost the ability to catch this species but with 129 large gulls colour ringed the value of the catch was fantastic. Mostly Herring Gulls and the wet conditions making a few birds a little dirty gave some interesing ID issues! However, KHD did well to pick out another Caspian much to the delight of BW. Two Yellow-legs and a nice sample of 25 Great Black-backs is an excellent total for Rainham. A really good team effort with a tricky shower in the middle of processing and again great work from the tip staff saw an excellent end to 2011.17-Dec-2011
TRIP - Pitsea - 03/12/2011: After calling the day off then back on again we arrived at a windy but dry tip. Setting position was good and there were lots of birds on the tip, lots and lots and lots of big gulls. After a late start due to the threat of rain a first catch was soon in the bag. Our first catch of over 100 Great Black-backed Gulls in one catch. We processed the birds then set for a second attempt. After a quick roll from the compactor driver we had good numbers of large gulls in the catching area again. Once fired and processed another sixty plus Great Black-backs was just incredible. A really good day with 476 in total of which only 19 were Black-headed Gulls.03-Dec-2011
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