Today, 1st November 2024 at 17:41, I received an interesting email all the way from Maine in the USA, sent by Magill Weber :-
Hello Gareth,
A fascinating story here in Maine, USA. Yesterday one of our local birders found and photographed a Common Gull on a golf course in Rockland, Maine, USA. Today a few of us went out and found the gull again. However, when comparing the birds from yesterday and today, only today's bird was ringed. Two different Common Gulls! I am wondering if this ringed bird might be one of your birds. Dark Blue code could be '741' or '744' or possibly 'ZAI' or '2A1'. The photos are fairly terrible, but hoping you might be familiar with the bands, or may know who else might recognize this color ringing scheme.
Photos are available here-->
Many thanks for taking a look.
Cheers,
Magill Weber
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Having checked the cr-birding site, only three projects in Europe uses Blue Darvics on Common Gulls, two of which belong to Spain with the used codes starting with the number 5. All British-rung Common Gulls start with the number two regardless of the colour of the ring. As it turns out, I am the only British ringer that uses Blue Darvics on Common Gulls. I am using the same series of Blue Darvics that formerly belonged to Shane Wolsey when he colour-ringed Common Gulls on the Copeland Islands in County Down. My use of these rings, have been to ring Common Gull chicks on Rathlin Island in County Antrim. It may be possible that the bird concerned was ringed as a chick in 2017 on Rathlin Island with the code reading - 2AI* (* = letter) - A, F or T. Also, the ring in the photos looks to be slightly damaged with the final digit missing.
I have stressed to Magill that better photos are needed to confirm this bird.
Fingers crossed.
*************************************************************************