Lesser Whitethroats and Gulls

Clive found a couple of Lesser Whitethroats yesterday morning, right in the centre of Seaton around the Bowling Green.  I was very pleased to spend some time with one of them this morning, and this post was going to be all about them, however later on today I went gulling...

The Lesser Whitethroat post will happen, and truthfully it's not just the gulls that have delayed it.  I want to spend more time with them and hopefully get some more photos and maybe even some sound recordings, before constructing a blog post. The question I want to try and answer is how far north/east have they originated from?  So do check back soon...just not too soon as I want to gather as much detail as I can.  

I managed to squeeze in a look along the Estuary at about 3pm today. Not huge numbers of gulls present but one of the first birds I saw at the southern end of the Estuary was this second-winter Caspian Gull.  On structure not a big bird at all, and any Casp lacking the usual impressive Casp stature worries me, especially when its a second-winter lacking a P10 window.  It still looked pretty smart though...

Bottom right - the one with a snowball for a head!

 

That thick and dark neck shawl gave it such a striking appearance!

 

The next decent gull greeted me when I arrived at Coronation Corner.  On the near bank was an absolute stonker of an adult Yellow-legged Gull.  All adult Yellow-legged Gulls look good, but some look really good, like this one...

Come on.  What a stonker.

 

It wouldn't stop preening though, so getting photos of its head out was a bit tricky

It then went for a walk to the waters' edge...

 

Where it stayed until I left. 

 

Next up was a distant third-winter bird. Am not ashamed to say I thought this was a Yellow-legged Gull based on head and bill shape, as well as leg length. However on reflection its mantle colour (only a smidgen darker than nearby Herrings), and far more importantly Gav's much better photos of a 3w Casp he found on the Estuary a few hours earlier, have brought me to the conclusion this is the very same bird. So a third-winter Caspian Gull...

Right of centre at the near edge of the flock, the rounded soft headed slightly darker mantled bird

 

The final gull worthy of mention, other than three Med Gulls, was what I think is a Herring x Lesser Black-backed.  When I first saw the dark mantle and yellow legs I presumed I had come across a second adult Yellow-legged, but its short dull yellow legs, streaky head and the 'off' colour of the mantle meant I landed on hybrid...

Preening in the above shot, above the head of the left hand preening Herring Gull in the water in front.  Can see the short yellow-ish legs here

 

The only feature that seemed to count against Herring x LBBG was that its bill was a decent size.  I usually find these hybrids have smaller LBBG-type bills, but I guess they must vary. Weirdly it doesn't look as dark mantled in this shot as it was in real life.

 

If the gull quality continues like this throughout the winter, it's going to be a good one!  I wouldn't say no to some more classic-looking Caspian Gulls though...