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The female Caspian Gull with the Interrex – rings & telemetry logger (tagged by Marcin Sidelnik) has returned to its colony in Kępa Nadbrzeska. Even twice, on February 16, after a long stay in Hungary, she set off for Poland and, on February 20. In the morning, she reached the vicinity of the colony. For almost a week, she visited landfills in the vicinity of Warsaw. Every day another place, on each side of Warsaw. She also stayed twice at Zegrze Reservoir and even reached Rawa Mazowiecka (during the same day Zegrze-Rawa-Zegrze) after which she moved southwards to Ostrava in the Czech Republic on February 28. After a few days near Ostrava, a few days in Goczałkowice Reservoir and at Kuźnica Warężyńska, today she is once again near Warsaw in a direct flight.

The male invariably stays on the lake on the Swiss-Austrian border, about 1000 km in a straight line from his colony.

Rooftop breeding colonies can be found at numerous locations in Europe, and may include species like Herring, Lesser Black-backed, Yellow-legged or Great Black-backed Gull. But Caspian Gulls have started doing this as well. In two districts in the Polish capital Warsaw they established breeding colonies on rooftops. Both locations, Warszawa-Targówek & Warszawa-Mokotów, hold mixed species and for the moment breeding numbers are still low. However, the famous Caspian Gull colony of Gatovo in Minsk, Belarus illustrates the potential of such rooftop colonies for the next decade. We hope to document this early stage of rooftop colonisation in Poland, and first data can be found on the “small colonies” page under: Warszawa-Mokotów.

Caspian Gulls nesting in a mixed colony with other large gull species on 6-store apartment building in 2018 in Mokotów –
Mewy białogłowe gniazdujące w mieszanej kolonii z innymi gatunkami dużych mew na dachu 6-pietrowego budynku w dzielnicy Mokotów w Warszawie

created the structure for ‘cachinnans in Poland’

 

Today we created webpages for all the cachinnans location in Poland. The structure we follow is an exact copy of other pages on the website gull-research.org, with

  • the main menu & list of locations on the left-hand side,
  • the main in the centre,
  • and on the right are various thumbnails, like
    • a small map of Poland indicating the approximate location,
    • a link to an active google map,
    • and of course links to specific pages of the ringed gulls to illustrate breeders for that colony. 

At this moment, the website is still much of an ’empty structure’, although some pages have content, e.g. it may be fun to visit the page ‘team‘ so you finally have an idea who was the ringer of that ringed cachinnans you observed this morning at your local patch. 

In the near future, we will add more data on population dynamics, but also data on breeding biology, migration of ringed birds, breeding numbers, etc. So please have a look so now and then!

screen screen dump for location Włocławek