Colour Ringing our gulls

Copeland Bird Observatory hosts quite a large Gull colony made up of a mix of Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls. Both gulls are in fact amber listed (BOCCCI 2020-2026) and BTO trends show that both these species are in decline. Over the years the Observatory has ringed gulls on the island and in 2023, a colour ringing project was started to monitor our local colonies movements. Our Colour Rings are Orange with 3 numbers followed by a ‘:C’ (eg 028:C). We hope that people anyone who comes across these colour ringed beauties will report these to either us or the BTO via their reporting page online, Which can be found here

Please do get in touch if you see one of our Gulls, the more re-sightings we get the more information we gain on the scale of movements and if birds return to CBO once they reach breeding age.

The Map above shows recoveries of both Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gulls.