The daily lives of St Ives Herring Gulls

Species: Herring gull

 

Gulls breeding on rooftops have had a lot of bad press over the years and have become increasingly unwanted. Most people who live or work in an urban gull colony dislike them or even hate them, and the problems they present (noise, mess, damage and aggression) are well-documented. But whilst we know a lot about gulls in the wild, we know precious little about gulls in town. In a small way, that’s about to change…

Herring gull nest on a rooftop

For many, Herring gulls all look the same. Well, not any more – four of them (two males and two females) were trapped at their nests in St Ives, Cornwall recently and fitted with UvA-BiTS GPS loggers. They are the first roof-nesting gulls ever to have been tagged in this way in Britain. We can now begin the process of finding out who they really are as opposed to having to guess.

St Ives at low tide

 

 

 

 

 

This website is designed to allow you to share in our investigations and follow these ground-breaking, St Ives Herring Gulls from spring 2014 – spring 2015. In May 2015 the base station in St. Ives was dismantled, and the birds can no longer be followed in near real time.

Contact Persons:

Peter Rock

Matt Ainsworth

Support: Judy Shamoun-Baranes (shamoun@uva.nl)

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Conditions of Use: We kindly ask you to respect the intellectual property rights of the academics posting their work on this website. As such, information and content, including images and data, provided on this website may not be copied, reproduced or republished in any form without the express written permission of the UvA-BiTS manager (UvA-BiTS@uva.nl).

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