After a cracking week of late autumn sunshine, the weather changed at the weekend with Saturday being a particularly grim day. So, perfect for gulls then!
Before I mention the gulls I will just round up what I saw during the period of settled weather. Not much to be honest, with a real feeling of autumn coming to a close. Overhead it's just been the odd Skylark and a very small number of Chaffinches, along with the last few flocks of Wood Pigeons. No wonder Monday was so spectacular, this was clearly the final push. There's certainly a few more Redwing around here now, but not loads, and somehow I still haven't seen a Fieldfare yet this autumn! There's still a few Chiffchaff and plenty of Goldcrests about, however continued searching has failed to show anything better in this department which makes me feel very short-changed.
My highlight of last week came right at the end of it, well after sunset in fact on the Friday. A family walk up Beer Head showed a surprise Woodcock, which gave lovely flight views as it flew towards Branscombe from near the look-out on Beer Head. This is only the second Woodcock I have ever seen up here. I don't know if it was an autumn migrant that I fluked upon, or a local wintering bird coming out to feed in the open fields here, but I suspect the latter.
As I alluded to earlier in this post, Saturday was all about gulls, although a look along the river early afternoon didn't actually show that many gulls - but it did include some Casps. It was great to catch-up with Gav who had the same idea, and he saw an additional first-winter bird to those mentioned below.
My first Casp and my best one, was a first-winter. Although when I say the views were dreadful, this is an understatement. I picked it up when it was fast asleep in a gull flock on Colyford Marsh, half a kilometer away during some extremely heavy rain. It's because of these factors that my photos of it are so shoddy, nothing at all to do with the capabilities of the camera-operator of course...
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| Bird at the back just left of centre. I could just see clean white underparts, neck and breast, and the really plain and clean greater coverts, with neat pale tips, as well as black tertials. |
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| The most I could zoom in on it, but neck shawl visible here after it woke up, as well as grey on mantle and a clearer view of the wing pattern. |
I was pleased to get Gav on this bird, and we both actually had pretty decent flight views of it as it took to the air and flew north up the valley.
The second bird in this flock I don't think I can quite claim. I still think it's a third-winter Caspian, and have no reason to suggest it isn't, however views just weren't quite good enough for me to confirm and the photos weren't as useful as I was hoping...
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| Bottom left hand bird. Nice clean white head, small eye and longish looking bill with a perfect third-winter Casp dark smudge on the bill. I think I can even detect a bit of rear neck streaking but not completely certain of this. |
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| Bottom left again. This shot shows head shape a bit better. Although it doesn't look it in these pics it had a slightly darker top to its mantle compared to the Herring Gulls around, but not dark enough for Yellow-legged. |
My third Caspian-ish bird of the day, Gav and I both independently found bobbing about on the water north of Coronation Corner.
It looked ok on the water...
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| Not a huge bill, but lovely white head with a bit of a neck shawl - an ok looking second-winter Casp |
But I didn't like the look of it so much on dry land. Even if it did sport a very striking P10 mirror which is a big tick for a Caspian of this age...
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| Right hand bird (with juv GBBG and second-winter Herring)... quite a grubby looking head with some eye mask streaking, a short bill and very average-sized legs. But that P10 is there for all to see. |
I have been battling in my head about this third bird ever since I've seen it. I want to have it, and that P10 really helps its cause, but there are so many features that hint it is more than just a little impure. Of course many of our Caspian Gulls these days are no doubt a little bit rough around the edges, but I think this one might just cross the line for me. May need a few more days pondering on it.
Let me know your thoughts, if you have any. Hopefully my next post will be about whatever stripy warbler I am due to come across any day now...
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