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.
PERDIX BIRDER 