Spent today out on Ireland’s eye just off the coast of Howth in Dublin. It’s a small island with large colonies of seabirds such as Greater and lesser black backed gulls, herring gulls, cormorants, shags, razor bills, guillemots, fulmars, and even a few puffins.
There are a group of researchers interested in the growth rates of greater black backed gulls, cormorants and shags. So they capture the young of these species, place an identifying ring on their legs and depending on the species, they take various biometric measurements, like head size, tarsus length etc.
Today I was invited to help them out. I didn’t know what to expect. I’d heard that the gulls don’t take kindly to people being anywhere near their chicks and show this by dive bombing the offender, and by god do they dive bomb, it’s terrifying the first time. They get really close and whoosh by your head, they rarely make any contact but one of the researchers told me of a trip to A&E after a GBB gull attacked him and managed to penetrate his hat, hair and skull!
The picture above is a bit blurred due to me having to duck and take a photo at the same time. At the time I was replacing a chick which we had just put a ring on.
The gull chicks are very cute, no cues as to the menacing appearance they take on as adults.
This was the first gull chick off about 10 that I put rings on, all in all there were about 40 ringed and measured over the course of the day. They will be resampled at a future date and their measurements compared to see how they are developing.
The chicks are quite vulnerable to attack, from land based predators (of which there are none on Ireland’s eye) and other adult gulls. I saw several dismembered chicks scattered around the island, so its little wonder the adults are so protective of their young and eggs.
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Birding, Ringing and Behavioural Ecology 
