11th February

The windy weather, with Storm Eric, brought in a brief purple patch on the Meadow with some huge roosts towards and during the weekend with vast numbers of large gulls. The only trouble was that the wind often made for difficult viewing conditions. On Thursday in very blowy conditions there were at least 4 YELLOW-LEGGED GULLS in the throng and a flock of 200 of the BARNACLE GEESE came in to roost, one of the higher counts for this flock for quite a while. To add to this there were 100 GOLDEN PLOVER, again one of the largest counts that we've had for quite a while. On Saturday Thomas Miller struck gold with no less than 3 CASPIAN GULLS, a 1st winter, a 2nd winter and the 3rd winter from a few weeks back. On Sunday the roost again huge but he reported that it was too windy to do it much justice. This week, in much calmer conditions, the large numbers have now melted away and it's back to more modest numbers.



The three Caspian Gulls, courtesy of Thomas Miller

There are a couple more ticks to report: Kingfishers have been reported to me on a couple of occasions now along the river (it was only a matter of time) and Thomas Miller also had the first PINTAIL of the year a few evenings back.



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