From Malaga to Newport

Puerto de la Calleta de Velez, Malaga, Spain.

Thanks to Jose Sanchez Cordero I've now recieved information about the colour ringed lesser black-backed gull I reported from the River Usk in Newport recently. It was ringed in late March last year (2017) at Puerto de la Caleta de Velez, Malaga, Spain and was subsquently reported four times up until early April that year.

Interestingly it was ringed a Larus fuscus intermedius. There are three recognised subspecies of fuscus;

• L.f.fuscus is the smallest and darkest of the subspecies. Its alternative name is the Baltic gull and breeds on the Baltic coasts of Finland, Sweden and Estonia and migrates to sub-Sharan Africa in winter.

• L.f. intermedius and L.f.graellsii are more simarly to one another than fuscus. Intermedius normally breeds from Belguim and the Netherlands eastwards into Scandinavia, and graellsii which breeds in Britain, Ireland, France, northwest Spain, Portugal, Iceland and Greenland. Both subspecies largely winter in southwest Europe and northwest Africa.