When birding is slow, or I feel like I want to see lots of birds at close range, a trip to a local gull hotspot is always interesting. Sites such as beaches, tips and even ploughed fields often host hundreds or even thousands of gulls and the possiblity of finding a rare species. Even if rare species are not found then there is always the chance of finding birds with colour rings that can reveal interesting information about the individual, although often it turns out that they haven’t actually travelled that far. At the end of 2020 I paid a visit to a local waste recycling centre where I found large numbers of Herring Gull, Black-headed Gull, Common Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull as well as singles of Yellow-legged Gull, Caspian Gull and Mediterranean Gull, a good selection of species. However, as I was looking closely at the birds I came across one with a white colour ring on it with an alphanumeric code on it that was easily photographed and read. As it turned out, this bird had travelled a long way to visit the glorious landscape of a waste site in Southeast London.

In Southeast England I find quite a few colour ringed gulls, usually with red rings with white alphanumeric codes and these birds have all been ringed in the region and often they have been previously reported over the years from the same site. On this occasion the white ring signified that it had come from further afield.

From this photo I was able to read the code KS61 and after consulting the European Colour Ring Birding website I found that this bird had been ringed by a project in Russia; more interesting than most of the ring recoveries I make. Now, Russia is a very large country so I was keen to learn more about this bird and sent an email to the contact listed for this ringing project.

I had to wait a while for a reply and I actually started to think that I would not get one but eventually I learned that this bird had been ringed at Kandalakshskiy Nature Reserve, Murmansk, Russia on 7th July 2018, quite a journey. Presumably SE London is a much milder place to spend the winter than northern Russia and it is easy to find food at this waste management centre. My observation was made on 30th December and it turns out that it was just the second recovery of this bird, with the first being at the same location just a few weeks earlier.

Certainly this was a bigger traveller than most of the gulls I find that have colour rings on them – Colour-ringed Herring Gulls. Finding birds like this can really add to an interesting day’s birding, I would encourage others to keep a look out for birds like this and try to read the code on the rings; much easier with a good camera or telescope.