For photographers large congregations of birds at close range are a blessing so it was with this expectation that I took Michael Wong to Erith Pier, on the River Thames, in early August. Although for many people a bunch of gulls might not seem that exciting, the bright early morning light, variety of species and plumages made for some nice photographic opportunities. Black-headed Gulls made up the bulk of the birds but we also got lucky with a juvenile Mediterranean Gull, a few smart Lesser Black-backed Gulls, plenty of Herring Gulls and a couple of first year Yellow-legged Gulls. In addition while I was scanning birds on the exposed mud I noticed another point of interest; a Black-headed Gull wearing a yellow leg ring. 

Many of the gulls at Erith were polite enough to pose nicely for us at close range, particularly with the enducement of some food, with these birds displaying different stages of moult from summer plumage into winter plumage. If one of these birds had been wearing a ring it would have been easy to read the code upon it.

However, the bird I had spotted was quite a distance away but with a 100-400mm zoom lens I decided to take a few shots and see if luck would be with me in capturing the leg ring at the right angle so it could be read.

From the back of the camera I couldn’t read the code but hoped that once I had it on a computer screen I would be able to zoom in and read it. Until then I took some more photos of gulls, including a few more Black-headed Gulls.

Like many photographers, my sim card just gets stacked full of images that I forget about so it took me nearly two months before the card was totally full and I was forced to deal with thousands of pictures, including the photograph of the yellow colour-ringed Black-headed Gull. The shot I took was a lucky one and I was able to read the ring code: 2KJT.

From experience of submitting other ringed gulls I expected to find out that this bird has been recorded at landfill sites in Southeast England, so when I searched for this ringing project on cr-birding.org and found that it was part of the North Thames Gull Group ringing project I was not surprised. I sent the relevant details to the group – observation date, ring code, species and accompanying photo – and got a very quick reply with a link to the following map with details of this bird’s travels; the full history is here – Black-headed Gull 2KJT.

As is often the case with these birds, it was originally ringed at Pitsea landfill site in Essex (21st March 2015). The only previous record, before mine, was from the Axe Estuary, Seaton, Devon on 9th March 2020. My record (Erith, SE London) 2nd August 2021 will be added to this data, awaiting any further observations.