Juvenile Caspian Gull in Peterborough

It's almost inevitable that I see my first juvenile Caspian Gull of the season in Peterborough around the Birdfair weekend. Here's the 2017 offering, with a strikingly dark tail and mucky underwing but otherwise looking pretty classic.

Juvenile Caspian Gull, Dogsthorpe Tip, Peterborough, 17 August 2017

Fantastic Frampton

Back on 22 August - the morning after Birdfair - I popped over to Frampton Marsh to meet up with warden Toby Collett to take a look round and see what the RSPB does to manage this brilliant reserve. I've written an article on my visit, which can be read on the BirdGuides website.

It so happened that my visit coincided with a massive arrival of Curlew Sandpipers - they were literally everywhere, flocks were coming and going and their calls echoed around the reserve. We counted over 200 by the end of the morning, all but a few being fresh juveniles.

As well as this there were a minimum of 10 Little Stints, several Spotted Redshanks, hundreds of Black-tailed Godwits and Knot plus four-figure numbers of Dunlin. It was among the latter that I found the undoubted highlight of the morning ... a leucistic bird! I've never seen leucism in any shorebird before and although it's documented in many species, I can't recall ever seeing photos of a Dunlin quite so white. Amazing looking thing, particularly in flight when the closest thing it resembled was a miniature Fairy Tern or Snow Petrel!

Frampton is absolutely stuffed with birds. It must be a brilliant local patch, although I'm amazed Toby and the team get any work done here with so many distractions constantly on show! I wish I could visit more often - it certainly felt a bit of a non-event when I was checking the gulls on the Thames in Chiswick later that day!

Waders and wildfowl cover the scrapes at Frampton Marsh

Another juvenile Caspian Gull

A quick lunchtime visit to Dogsthorpe Tip on Monday produced another juvenile Caspian Gull. This latest individual was particularly pale and distinct, despite scapular moult having only just commenced, and was also a massive bird.

Juvenile Caspian Gull rivalling Great Black-backs for size

The pit here is pretty big and most of the gulls are out of range for the DSLR but birds on the spit show quite well. When gulls take off from the spit and head back to the tip to feed, they tend to fly quite close by - so the views can be quite good with luck.

Chiswick, 16 August

A quick visit to the River Thames by Chiswick Eyot at last knockings on Tuesday evening revealed two 2cy Yellow-legged Gulls among just 25 large gulls. I've been really impressed by the turnover of birds here; both of these are new individuals that I'd not seen before. The usual tactic of lobbing out a loaf of wholemeal brought them to within a few metres at times, but the light was too far gone for any flight shots.

2cy Yellow-legged Gull (bird #1), Chiswick, 16 August 2016

2cy Yellow-legged Gull (bird #2), Chiswick, 16 August 2016

Comparison of 2cy Yellow-legged (left) and Herring Gulls, Chiswick, 16 August 2016

Monday gulls

A short Thames gulling session around Chiswick Eyot on Monday lunchtime produced a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull among at least 110 large gulls. The michahellis was quite a dark and well-marked individual with scapular moult well under way, and clearly a different bird to that seen last week. I also had a juvenile on a brief pre-cricket visit on Sunday, but have no idea whether it's the same bird.

Juvenile Yellow-legged Gull, Chiswick, 8 August 2016

Arguably more interesting, though, was a blue-ringed 2cy Lesser Black-backed Gull. This is the first ringing recovery I've had over four visits in the past ten days, and nice for it not to be a red NTGG job! Suspicions that it was a Dutch bird were quickly confirmed by Roland-Jan Buijs - it was ringed as pullus on 13 June 2015 at Vlissingen-Oost, Zuid-Holland. This is the first time it's been seen anywhere since then.

2cy Lesser Black-backed Gull blue '9B', Chiswick, 8 August 2016

Swamp donkey

Adult Western Swamphen, Minsmere, Suffolk, 1 August 2016

A Western Swamphen was found at Minsmere on Sunday 31 July. I didn't actually hear about the bird until the evening as I was playing cricket and didn't have my mobile to hand. As such I visited early on Monday morning, and enjoyed fine views for much of my stay from 07:45-10:30. That said, the bird was always over the far side of the pool and thus rarely any closer than about 100 metres.

In my (and many others') opinion, this bird meets all the criteria you'd hope for in a wild bird. An unusual northward dispersal has been occurring in France this year and it's easy to fit this bird in to the pattern observed there. You can read much more about this influx in an article by Hugo Touzé and myself on the BirdGuides website:

• Touzé H & Jones J. 2016. Western Swamphen in Suffolk — a new British bird? [online] BirdGuides.com. Available at: birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?a=5831

The bird's last showing at Minsmere came on Friday, resulting in a six-day stay. There has been no sign since. I'd argue that the relatively short stay is another factor in favour of this bird being wild - though the most northerly swamphen in France (in Morbihan) is still present at the time of writing, having been found back on 20 July. Others, further south in France, lingered for up to a week or so.

The jury's of course still out and it may be that some damning evidence comes to light that renders it unacceptable as a wild bird - though I doubt that'll be the case, and I suspect (hope) that it rightfully finds its way on to Category A.

Weekend on Mull

 Duart Castle from the Oban-Craignure ferry

Just back from a weekend on Mull with Chris C and Ash H. Had great success on our chartered boat with the excellent Sea Life Surveys out of Tobermory on Saturday, connecting with about 15 Basking Sharks off the north side of Coll during the afternoon in addition to a couple of Minke Whales and a bunch of Harbour Porpoises. Birds included a few White-tailed Eagles, and a couple of Storm-petrels among more common seabirds.

 Minke Whale

Basking Shark

The real highlight, though, was getting to swim with the sharks. Though we were a little limited on time, we had some great passes - best for me was one animal cruising by within just a few metres (see images below). Unfortunately I only had my housemate's basic Go Pro to take photos/video with, so only managed a few blurry records and a short video of one animal making a more distant pass. A couple of photos (that's Ash in the first one):

... and here's the video (best watched in HD):

Thanks very much to Ewan and all the rest of the team at Sea Life Surveys for a fantastic day out, and great to meet Sandy, Gus et al. on the boat. Here's hoping I'll be back next year!

Azorean Gull at Rainham?

During the four hours I spent at Rainham on Tuesday, I had two birds which, for all intents and purposes, may be hybrids. The first bird, an adult, was the less interesting of the two, and was what I would call a likely Lesser Black-backed x Herring Gull, similar to this bird photographed by Dominic Mitchell in late 2011 (could it perhaps even be the same?).

Adult gull, presumed hybrid Lesser Black-backed x Herring.

The second is a 3cy bird, moulting in to a third-winter plumage. Age aside, it looks remarkably like some of these claimed Azorean Gulls of recent autumn/winters (Oxon, Beds) - mantle colouration at the dark end of Yellow-legged Gull, but also too pale for Lesser Black-backed. Structurally, it felt like a Yellow-legged Gull - big and robust, long-winged, with nice and long yellowish legs. Fascinatingly, it had a broad and full black tail band, with some barring left on the uppertail - again, only just visible in the images but nevertheless significantly more than one would expect to see on a michahellis of this age. The retained secondaries (only just visible in the photos) were a dark chocolate brown, and there was also a brownish wash to some of the new lesser/median coverts. A retained tertial (maybe two, I couldn't see) was dark chocolate-brown with some pale scalloping limited to the tip.

I couldn't make out the eyering colour, but reviewing photos it appears to have some reddish tinge to it at least (although atlantis at this age don't necessarily show an obvious red eyering at this age). The iris is a very pale yellow. The head streaking is dense, creating a hooded effect. I was initially put off by how this streaking extends down the nape/neck, although looking at photos shows that this is not a problem in atlantis at this age - had it been an adult, that might have been different.

NB: have been looking at the primary pattern as closely as my (poor) images will allow; the one thing that concerns me is the pattern on p5 - see eighth photo down - although the black band is complete, it does not seem as broad as in the adults that I've seen shots of in flight. However, it looks pretty similar to the Oxfordshire adult of 2009. There also seems to be a hint of black in the outer web of p4. Unfortunately it doesn't help that the bird is in active moult and the primaries just seem to be all over the place. UPDATE: p5 doesn't seem to be out of range.

I've always been pretty sceptical about Azorean Gulls occurring in Britain - at least in the Midlands - and typically opt for the lazy hybrid option. But this bird has fuelled my interests further - this thing looks almost identical to some of the birds I saw on Corvo last October, as well as sharing plenty of similarities this thing photographed on Sao Miguel in September. It's not far off this bird from Terceira, either.

So, what now? Well, apart from muting it as a candidate Azorean Gull, I don't think you can go much further. It would be great to see photos of known hybrids (Herring x LBB or Yellow-legged x LBB), but they seem difficult to come across. All you can say is this bird shares a lot of features with Azorean Gulls of a similar age. However, it would take a braver man than me to totally rule out the possibility of a hybrid of some description.