Gloria, our neighboring herring gull, received a ring.

I previously (exactly five months ago), wrote about Gloria, a herring gull who frequently visits our rooftop.

We were quite conident back then that she was a girl-gull, partially because she was often hanging out with two ringed terrifying boys (JLN44 aka Julien, and JMT80 aka Jean-Marie), and we assumed one of them must have been her partner.

During breeding season she disappeared for a while, and eventually returned as a proud parent together with a youngster who kept, without any luck, begging for food, and several evenings Gloria stayed behind on the balcony for a few more hours after the rest of the flock had left, napping and recharging from the exhausting duties of being a new parent.

We kept following the adventures of our fierce girlgull from our balcony, recognizing her by the pattern of her iris. And big was our surprise when earlier this month she came to visit with a freshly put color ring, providing us with a bit more background information on her.

And as it turns out, she's a he! Our fearless Gloria is actually Glorius, a big boy with a beak and head length of 126.5mm and wing length of 454mm, weighing a bit over a kilo.

Since receiving the ring, he's only been observed at the location of his ringing and our rooftop, but I'm excited to find out where else he will pop up. Maybe next summer he'll be observed on a nest?