Month: January 2025

A photo dump of the 12 different Caspian Gulls I’ve seen this month between Shakey beach and st MArgaret’s (and not including the 9 i counted following the ferry en route to the Wallcreeper on the 31st Dec). Lower numbers compared to December due to a period of calm and bright weather, which is pretty useless for winter gulling here.

1st winter above and below

Different 1st winters above and another below

Another different 1st winter above and also another below

Second winter above and below

A different second winter below

Adult above and below,

Fourth winter above and below

Third winter below

Adult below.

A sudden injection of Common gulls here at the coast and a few ‘eastern looking’ birds around between Shakey beach and st Margaret’s, mostly sitting o the water or moving south further out to sea. Nothing actually identifiable as heinei cam close enough for inspection until this adult briefly came in to the melee at shakey on the 27th. Picked up at a distance with its dark mantle and long winged look, the mostly clean, unstreaked head, yellow bill and Caspian Gull like ‘shawl’ of neck streaks was obvious, plus in flight what looked like reduced white and a good chunk of black in the primaries. (any birds showing heavily streaked heads, equally sized mirrors on P9&10 and paler mantles get mostly ignored!)

There are several primary patterns that, along with the correct head and bare part pattern can prove heinei – in this case a relatively small P9 mirror with minimal white tongue tip to P7 and the black on the outer web of P6 covers more than half the exposed feather.

It sounds like other people were seeing Common Gulls moving south that, and the following day, so perhaps more to be found out there, Ive also known feburary to be very good for common gull numbers as birds begin moving north again.

I’ve tried looking for Wallcreepers in multiple mountain ranges aswell as reliable winter sites in Cyprus and France and its never worked out. Ive been putting off twitching one for long enough and so before xmas formed a plan to spend New years looking for a bird that turned up on a Chalk cliff above the banks of the Seine in Les Andelys, Normandie – less than 3 hours SW from Calais.

Present since early November there were a few sightings on ebird mid December and a friend living in France assured me it was reported for a few consecutive days just before Christmas so a plan was hatched and Amy and I boarded a ferry and headed down there on the 31st.

Not such an unfamiliar thing to look at, these craggs are formed from the same Chalk strata as the Dover cliffs. A nervous 35 mins were spent looking for the bird early(ish) on New years day, I eventually caught a glimpse of it up busily feeding high up on the above cliff and basically detonated with excitement… Excellent prolonged scope views when suddenly the bird flew to the neighbouring cliff, much closer to where I was stood, and eventually came down to the lower levels, thrilling views of a mind blowing bird.

I watched the bird continuously for almost 2 hours, views of it on a chalk cliff too were extra meaningful, and quite painful on the neck! I gave the camera some time but not much as light was poor and views were much more fun. At around 12.30 the bird disappeared into a cave high up and didn’t come out. We came back after some lunch and it was feeding high up again and enjoyed some more scope views.

I may go back before winter is over, feel free to get in touch for gen, its easily done from Kent or Sussex channel crossings. emailpartridge@gmail.com