Monday 8 February 2016

The weekend gull roost

7th February - the juvenile Glaucous Gull was reported again in the roost on the 6th.  I wasn't able to make that one, but did have about an hour at the roost on the 7th.

The most noticeable thing on arrival was that most of the gulls, in fact nearly all the small gulls, of which there were several thousand, were on the water.  This is slightly unusual, as they usually congregate on the spit.  About ten minutes after I arrived, a possible cause of this flew through west.  It was fairly close to me and close enough to hear it make a short call, a nice Peregrine and my first of the year.  This is presumably the same bird that has been reported on several dates recently, though on this occasion it didn't seem to make any particular effort to chase anything.

During my hour to near darkness I failed to find the Glaucous Gull, which must have gone somewhere else tonight unless it came in after dark.  I did find two nice 1st winter Caspian Gulls though, one of which I was able to make a short video of phone scoping.  As usual, it's not great, but it's slightly better if you watch it in 720 HD - see here

The small gulls were generally too far away on the eastern side to enable a meaningful look for Med Gulls, though I did get them a short grilling before turning my attention back to the larger gulls.  Other than that, I wasn't sure if I was seeing two or four Shelduck in a cursory glance.  Certainly this morning two pairs are present.

The previous week was fairly uneventful.  I did take a short video of a Red Kite eating some carrion on the spit.  I wasn't sure what it was eating, though it looked to possibly be a large fish.  See here

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