If Carlsberg did birding....

Photos:

Peregrine, Waterworks Lane, Winwick
Iceland, Yellow-legged, Great Black-backed and Herring Gulls all at Richmond Bank
Record shot of a first Black-tailed Godwit for me at Houghton Green Flash

12^th March

This morning started well and the day just got better. First up was a Peregrine which was perched in the field opposite the feeding station in Waterworks Lane. I pegged it as an immature tiercel based on size plus I though the head and neck plumage was not quite neat enough for an adult and I though I could see some brownish feathers on the nape which are not apparent in the photos. Thoughts / comments welcome on this bird. Around 75 Tree Sparrows, 15 Yellowhammers and 3 Grey Partridges were busy feeding and were either unaware or unconcerned about the Peregrine, or for that matter nearby Buzzard and Kestrel.

I then headed off to Richmond Bank where I found plenty of gulls and no birders. I soon picked out two juvenile Iceland Gulls, one of which was a very large and very bleached bird. I also found a couple of Yellow-legged Gulls. Eventually I was joined by Jason Atkinson – by this time the gulls had spooked a couple of times and one of the Iceland’s had disappeared. We found a few more YLG’s between us and Jason found a Herring Gull with a deformed upper mandible and I found an adult Herring Gull which had lots of blue dye or paint on it. There were also a few ringed gulls – the ones I picked up being:

Lesser Black-backed Gull, Blue CCE which was ringed at Gloucester tip by the Severn Estuary Gull Group in the autumn of 2007. Since then it has been recorded every winter, including this one, in Madrid.

Herring Gull, White 5MH which was also ringed by the Severn Group in 2004 and has been recorded in that area each winter since then. It has only been recorded elsewhere on once occasion, in 2007 when it visited Brighton. Presumably it didn’t like the place!!!

The other ringed bird was Lesser Black-backed Gull, Blue WB1H which was ringed as a juvenile on Walney Island in 2005 and had not been seen since.

The highlight of the day occurred while I was trying to digiscope a YLG – we heard a call overhead and looked up to see a Short-eared owl drifting over and calling. It was soon joined by two others. One seemed to disappear against the dark backdrop of the opposite trees while the remaining two birds flew over the tip (with no reaction from the gulls) and spiralled up very high until lost to sight. Presumably setting off on migration?

I thought that this lot was a very good day, however there was a cherry on the cake in the form of a Black-tailed Godwit which dropped in to HGF shortly before dusk. A cracking bird for this place and a patch tick too!