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In June 2017 KUŞKOR colour ringed seven Audouin’s gull chicks at Kleides Islands. The chicks were ringed with green alphanumeric colour rings which are registered at the European Colour Ring Birding Platform. Anyone who sees these birds can use the online platform to understand where the bird was ringed and who to contact.

On January 2, 2021, local naturalist Hüseyin Yorgancı photographed what is almost certainly one of the seven ringed birds, since no other scheme is registered using a green ring sequence with this species. Now in its fourth winter, the bird photographed on the north coast at Kaplıca had retained some juvenile plumage and will be of breeding age in 2021.

Audouin’s gulls are protected by the Barcelona convention and are listed on Annex I of the EU’s bird’s convention, under which countries are obliged to identify and protect priority habitats for them. They are peculiar to the Mediterranean and the colony in Cyprus is key, as its most easterly breeding site.

The recent sighting shows that at least some of the Cyprus Audouin’s gulls remain around the island during winter, where they may mix with birds that arrive here to winter from other populations. An adult bird from the Greek Aegean area was sighted in Alagadi in 2011. Meanwhile, it is also likely that some of them spend the winter elsewhere.  Either way, the North Cyprus coast is clearly not only important as a breeding site, but also as a wintering ground and as well as securing good conditions at the Kleides islands colony, it is important to manage marine resources across the coast in a sustainable way.

We are encouraged by this observation and hope to understand the winter dispersal of birds around the island and to more distant wintering sites.

To protect Audouin’s gulls, KUŞKOR successfully advocated for a ban on landing at the breeding colonies in 2015, surveyed the islands for rats in 2017 and successfuly implemented a rat eradication project in 2018. For details of these projects see former newsletters.