The Birdfair event was a lot of fun ... I spent some time just wandering around and bumping into old friends and acquaintances ... I went to quite a few lectures ... I picked a few selected brains about some things like nocmigging ... I had a few excellent chocolate brownies and drank quite a few espressos from my new Birdfair reusable mug ...
... the Speyside Wildlife stand was great and gave an enthusiastic welcome and it was good to see Bruce Pearson again and have him draw an albatross in the front of the book I bought ...
... lectures that stood out were Mary Colwell's Curlew talk ...
... and Tormod Amundsen's intelligent perspective on bird hides ...
... good to chat with Tormod again ...
But there were some gulls ... and not far away ! News emerged on the Saturday afternoon of a putative Baltic Gull on Lagoon 4 ... this lagoon turned out to be viewable from the Dunlin Hide, only a stone's throw from the camping field ... the gull had flown but all was not lost ...
... in the hide was Steve Lister ( ? ) local gull man ... he pointed out a couple of Caspian Gulls and mentioned that there were no Herring Gulls present but Yellow-legged Gulls were there in small numbers ...
... the gulls were all distant ( hence the poor record shots ) and there was an inconvenient hummock behind which the gulls would disappear ... but no matter !
... the light was dull and flat and the Caspian Gull stood out from the Yellow-legged and lesser Black Backed Gulls on mantle colour alone ...
... the right leg carried a Polish ring ...
... a lovely long legged bird showing classic Casp. features of long slim bill, beady eye and bulging rear belly ...
... it raised its wings to show the very pale under-wing ...
... there was no further sign of the possible Baltic Gull that day ...
The next morning there were a few large gulls on the gravel spit ... and then this bird flew in ...
... long legs, particularly the tibia, long parallel sided bill, tertials with diffuse white tips and greater coverts with dark bases but becoming paler towards their tips ... there were a few second generation mantle feathers showing anchor marks ... this all looked good for juvenile Caspian Gull just moulting into first-winter ...
... a wing stretch showed the dark outer webs and pale inner webs of the inner primaries creating a venetian blind effect ...
... and the upper wing showed narrow wing bars created by the dark secondaries and dark bases to the greater coverts ...
... then a very dark, small and long-winged Lesser Balck Back showed briefly ... and disappeared ...
Later that day and by mid-afternoon the large gulls were reassembling ...
... one of the two near adult Caspian Gulls rested with two Yellow-legged Gulls standing behind and two LBB Gulls preening to the left ... this time with unwelcome sunshine the mantle colours were thrown into a confusing array of shadows ... but then the Casp. stood up and the red ring confirmed its identity ...
A very dark small and extremely long-winged LBB type Gull was on the water behind ...
... with the primary tips extending beyond the tail something like 30% as much again as on the LBB Gulls this looked like the Baltic candidate ... but it had no ring ...
No comments:
Post a Comment