Midlands (Gull) Road Trip

1st-2nd October 2014 - Northamptonshire

This week, having decorators in painting the house, I saw little chance of getting any work done. I therefore decided a short birding trip was in order and so, accompanied by my good friend - and this blog's official gull consultant - Martin Elliott, I headed for the gravel pits and landfills of Northants.

Stanwick Lakes near Wellingborough regularly holds 100's of Yellow-legged Gulls - and usually a few Caspian Gulls - in late summer and early autumn. The attraction is the nearby landfill, birds feed on the tip in the morning and drop in to the lakes during the afternoon to bathe and loaf. It seems the tip had lost some of its attraction to the gulls recently as numbers were very much down on recent weeks. Still, 20-30 michahellis and at least a couple of cachinnans wasn't bad.

Yellow-legged Gull 2/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

Yellow-legged Gull 2/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

Yellow-legged Gull 2/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

Yellow-legged Gull 2/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

No 1st years were close enough to photograph but I did get shots of one or two 3rd years.
 

Yellow-legged Gull 3cy 2/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

Yellow-legged Gull 3cy 2/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

Yellow-legged 3cy Gull 2/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

Sadly, no Caspians came this close, but here's a long distance attempt of a classic adult cachinnans - now I need to find another of these at Topsham Rec.

Caspian Gull 1/10/2014 - Stanwick, Northants.

Martin runs regular Gull Identification Workshops at Stanwick (also at Hayle, Cornwall), see here or here for more details, also Mark Avery has a very nice review of one of his first sessions.