It's been a rather quiet week on the Meadow. After the excitement of the Caspian Gull last week there'd been no sign of it for most of the week. On the wader front the two REDSHANK and handful of DUNLIN have been around as well as the usual ducks and plovers but there'd not been anything particularly noteworthy.
Tonight when I went to visit the Meadow for the usual gull roost it was rather foggy and very atmospheric. The light was so poor and the gull roost was so huge that I hardly had time to scan through them all even once before it was too dark to see properly. In amongst the throng I soon managed to find the (or another - see below) adult CASPIAN GULL gull as well as three adult YELLOW-LEGGED GULLS.
A digiscoped videograb of the star bird...
Note the "full nappy" look that is often characteristic of this species
Note the "full nappy" look that is often characteristic of this species
...and for really hard-core gull fans here's nearly five minutes of
uninterrupted Caspian Gull preening action
I am wondering whether this might be a different bird from last week's as it seems to me that it has more black under the outermost (P10) primary than the previous bird. I'm awaiting the export opinion of Ian Lewington on this.
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