2nd February 2016 - Somewhere in the Midlands
It's symptomatic of the state of the birding around here right now that not only is this my first post of 2016 but that I had to travel a couple of hundred miles to find anything I felt like writing about.
Tuesday found myself and Martin Elliott in Tring talking with Hadoram Shirihai about our Tubenoses/Seabirds books projects. On Wednesday we spent several hours standing in a hedge by the A5 in Leicstershire; HGVs belting along behind us and a few hundred LWHGs on a pool in front of us. The occasional sleet shower wasn't too bad but the standing still was chilling - at least that's one excuse for the poor photos.
Highlights were at least two 1st winter Caspians but a couple of Yellow-legs and hundreds of argentatus Herring Gulls would have made it all worth while on their own.
 |
| Caspian Gull 1W - Shawell, Leics. 3/2/2016 |
 |
| Caspian Gull 1W - Shawell, Leics. 3/2/2016 |
 |
| Caspian Gull 1W - Shawell, Leics. 3/2/2016 - typically bolshy with the other gulls, almost a classic ID feature. |
 |
| Caspian Gull 1W - Shawell, Leics. 3/2/2016 - a real beauty but the first bird was even smarter. |
 |
| Herring Gull argentatus - Shawell, Leics. 3/2/2016 - classic primary pattern. |
 |
| Herring Gull argentatus - Shawell, Leics. 3/2/2016 - with Lesser Black-backed intermedius. |
 |
| Herring Gull argentatus - Shawell, Leics. 3/2/2016 - maybe my photo processing has made these darker than necessary but they really did look strikingly different to typical argenteus, some approaching graellsii in shade. Rarer than Caspian in Devon but is that just observer bias? |
No comments:
Post a Comment