Anklets are trending in 2018! Especially among New Zealand’s more threatened bird species. Black-billed gulls (Larus bulleri) have been banded as part of studies trying to determine how many chicks fledge each season, how many survive to breed in subsequent seasons and where they spend their winters. Birds are given two bands, a metal band with a number and a coloured band that indicates what breeding colony the bird was banded at. This gull was being uncooperative, in standing on only one leg. (Yes, we have reported the sighting, even though we have only partial information.)
Update
We had a reply back from the researcher, enough info was visible to ID the bird. It was banded as a chick on the Wairau River in December 2014, so is four years old. Black-billed gulls usually breed for the first time at two years of age, which this one did. It was recorded overwintering in Kaikoura in 2015 and 2016, and at Lake Rotoiti for the last two winters.
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