My weekends continue to deliver a mix of nice London finds and excellent birds twitched. Another excellent weekend with a mix of a couple of local surprises and a successful twitch in nice surroundings. A fruitless check of Crayford (despite high numbers of gulls) was followed by a walk up and down Creekmouth. The below Juv Iceland Gull flew down the Roding and out onto the exposed mud at low tide.
I’m not sure if ts the bird from Crayford and I’d like tho think with this current situation in the country that there are more than one or two Icelands in the area. The all too familiar large gull ‘raptor’ call alerted me to this 2cy Marsh Harrier . Missing a primary or two but seemed to be doing ok, Both birds were new for that area for me!
After a 5am rise on the Sunday, Rich B, a ridiculously dressed Dante and I headed down to see the adult Ross’ Gull on the south coast. A bird i’ve always wanted to see and after an unlucky miss of the bird on the mud at Ferrybridge we got good views of it at Radipole Lake. I think this species is the perfect small gull, all the features get me going, my pics don’t quite do it justice. A new gull species for me. Nice to catch up with a few people and meet some new! Condolences to old Filby who had his massive Swarro scope robbed, Urban birding…
After this we headed for the long staying Stilt Sandpiper currently at Stanpit (thanks Chris Ball for gen) and enjoyed scope views of it feeding across the inlet, flying about abit too, another new species and a wader i’ve wanted to see for some time. The below adult Mediterranean Gull was nice to take in too.
After that we were in the hide at Blashford Lakes for the gull roost where we saw the Ring Billed Gull, a nice 2nd w Caspian that rich pulled out and the bird that many are calling a Thayer’s Gull. With NO field experince of Thayers anywhere I’m not the person to make the call on it but it doesnt sit well with what I do know about the species and does resemble Herring Gulls that ive seen in the past. Not to disrespect the finder and thats all i can say really. No pics from this part of the day and to be honest i struggled with this way of viewing gulls as its miles (litterally) from how I like to study Gulls. Big thanks to Richard Bonser for driving and being sound whe it came to my Mcdonalds ordeal…
PERDIX BIRDER 