I've been looking at my birding year list and thought I'd try and fill in a few gaps where I can look for specific birds locally. One bird that I didn't record until November was a common gull which admittedly had to be pointed out to me by some other birders. So after consulting a bird book to check out the features of a common gull, I drove over to Liden Lagoon, a short drive south down the A419, where they have been recorded in the past. Although named 'common' , they are not, in fact ,the most common gull, therefore I knew it would be necessary to look at the gulls carefully in order to spot one.
This relatively small lake was busy with a variety of gulls and ducks etc., and I quickly found mallards, gadwalls and shovelers, also moorhen, coot, Canada geese and mute swans. There were also a large number of gulls around; at a glance I could see they were mostly black headed gulls with a few herring gulls too but I decided to scan each gull to see if any one looked slightly different, particularly having a speckled head, dark eye, and greenish yellow beak and legs.
With the birds fairly still and evenly spread on the water it was not too onerous a task to try and look at individual birds, and eventually, I spotted what I thought could be the bird I was looking for. Unlike the other gulls, it was splashing and preening in the water but definitely had a speckled head, dark eye and no red on its beak. I decided to get my camera out so I could ID it when I got home, but when I looked back on the water it had gone! I scanned the top of the water again with binoculars then realised that there was a pole sticking out upright in the water with a bird on top.... the possible common gull! I now had the advantage of seeing its leg colour and getting a good silhouette of the bird. Year tick number # 87!
No comments:
Post a Comment