Saturday 9th February: Iceland Gull & Caspian Gull

The Meadow continues to be on absolutely top form as far as gulls are concerned. Several local birders were present for this evening's session and whilst they couldn't turn up the adult Glaucous Gull again they did manage a 1w ICELAND GULL by way of compensation. What a great run of white-wingers we've had: that's now three different birds in three days. Of course the increased coverage certainly partly explains all the good birds turning up but it's an impressive run nonetheless.



1w Iceland Gull (c) Badger


To add to this great tally I've also got a belated CASPIAN GULL to report from yesterday. This time of year it's really hard to ID them correctly and according to Ian Lewington there are always loads of false claims around this time. Yesterday there was a bird which looked like the real deal but the record shot footage I posted wasn't quite good enough to convince either Ian or myself. However, today I managed to squeeze out some better resolution footage and the ID has now been confirmed to everyone's satisfaction.

1w Caspian Gull. Apparently the small row of dark feathers in the upper scapulars
 are a classic Cachinnans sign and it ticks all the right boxes.

Other birds reported today (from Badger, Dave Lowe, Terry Sherlock and Andy Last) were 4 GOOSANDER, 1 DUNLIN, 2 RUFF, 34 PINTAIL and about 400 Golden Plover. In addition 7 WHITE-FRONTED GEESE were seen though it was getting very dark then so they may well be the mongrel brood that was around recently - let's hope they stick around so that they can be checked out in better light.

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