Another weirdly brilliant Sunday for London birds. Richard B , Dante S and I had decided to tackle Creekmouth first thing, I should mention that the previous day i’d had a Hawfinch fly NE and Calling, over the main path near the entrance/exit. (I’m starting to really like the place). I picked Dante up from a deserted ASDA carpark at 07.30, there were a few large gulls milling about and maybe one or two blackheaded, on our way out Dante says “isnt that a 1w Med Gull?!” Bizarre place for one but very welcome.
Med Gulls are seriously scarce round here and everyone loves a first winter. We then meet rich at Creekmouth and before long are watching a juv Iceland Gull on the river Roding where it meets the Thames, I firstly took this to be the bird i’d had a couple of weekends before. It showed well and even came to bread.
this presumption was however wrong and the bird i’d seen previously was picked up by Rich on the shingle bar near the outfall.
Turn over was pretty good and we had a great mix of Gulls with 2 2nd winter and a 3rd winter Caspian Gulls, at least 4 Yellow-Legged Gulls of differing ages (1w below)…
An adult Med as well as an intresting lookig Hybrid bird, Probably Glaucous x Great Black–Backed monster.
Poor shot of one of the 2nd winter Caspians above, nice bird though with large p10 mirrors. The distance of some of the gulls had been abit more than we lucky lot are used to so we crossed the thames and spent some time at Crayford. We strangley arrived at the same time as Andy Lawson and then Mick Southcott and half an hour later Rich pulls out this amazing adult Kumliens Gull!!!
It took a change of light and some fresh eyes (MS had gone and come back) to spot the faint grey in the primaries, which was really not apparent at first to any of us. What a bird and the only adult White winged gull ive seen this side of Cornwall or west Ireland!
Some grey tones in the primaries seen in the closed wing just about visible and below is the open wing shot, (stolen from Dante) unbelievable really!
PERDIX BIRDER 