Boulogne

Yesterday I visited the area of Boulogne-sur-Mer to Calais, in the hope of reading some rings of Mediterranean gulls. It started slwoly, but at the end of the day I ended up with exactly 50 rings, from the following species: Mediterranean gull: 39 (mostly Belgian and French birds, also 1 from Poland and Hungary); Herring gull: 6 (3 Dutch, 2 Belgian, 1 British); Black-headed gull: 3 (1 French, Danish and Polish); Greater black-backed gull: 2 (Norwegian and French). The focus was on reading rings, but I managed to get some pictures too, as can be seen below. Hundreds of large gulls were present at Le Portel, but as always they were very wary and flew off all the time...

Mediterranean gull white E644 on the beach of Le Portel.

Herring gull yellow 5W (RJ Buijs), always seen at the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Herring gull white A7JG (R Thompson), a beautiful bird.

Herring gull white F.4 (RJ Buijs), on the beach of Le Portel.

Herring gull blue YUA.C (E Stienen), always nice to see one of our Belgian birds abroad!

Greater black-backed gull black 75L (G Le Guillou), most likely a bird from Le Havre. This is only my 3rd bird from this project.