Category: Gulls

Next week!

A one-off, in depth look at Caspian and Yellow-legged Gulls at Stanwick Lakes with national gull afficionado Martin Elliott. Don’t miss it!

They rarely linger in Northants or oblige with such close, prolonged views. This second-summer Mediterranean Gull is currently doing both. Since I found it last Sunday morning it appears to have become a bit of a celebrity among the Black-headed Gulls in the colony on Rotary Island at Summer Leys LNR. The proximity of the hide means it can be seen well, approached and photographed with relative ease. Its aggressive posturing display, along with its long, heavy bill suggests it’s a male, defending a small territory and ready to breed, despite showing signs of immaturity (black inner webs of outer primaries). A truly inspirational bird. Get it before it goes!

Many thanks to Clive Bowley, Alan Coles and Dave James for additional images.

… and a story of collaboration

It was still there this evening. When Steve Fisher first found an adult Glaucous Gull at Stanwick Gravel Pits on 24th March, little did he know it would give rise to the unearthing of a movement trail with an ID story attached.

This bird had been seen in flight the previous day by Stuart Page at Wellingborough Recycling Centre. Better views of it on the deck at nearby Stanwick revealed a red (actually orange) ring on its left leg, although any alphanumeric characters were not fully visible at the time. There was no sign of it on 25th, although it reappeared at Stanwick the following day and remained there, on and off, until 28th. It was not until that date that Steve was able to properly read the ring: G1NT.

An internet search initially revealed nothing concrete but, based on ring colour, the bird was thought probably to have originated from Svalbard. However, putting the details out on Twitter prompted a response from Richard Bonser, who recognised it as an individual which had been ringed the previous week at Pitsea Landfill in Essex … where it had been initially identified as an Iceland Gull.

Paul Roper of the North Thames Gull Group, which ringed the bird on 21st March, has kindly provided some background and given permission for the use of the movement map and in-hand image reproduced here.  More details on this and other ringed gulls are available at the NTGG website http://www.ntgg.org.uk/map/GV15782 which provides an interesting insight into gull study and ringing activities at Essex Landfill sites.

To quote from Paul:

“The initial identification of this bird shows a couple of things. Firstly in the hand they can be quite difficult. This is a small bird and although out of the range of Iceland (which was a mistake made on the day) it is at the lower range end for Glaucous and in fact we measured and selected the ring size for Herring Gull – Glaucous tend to take Great Black-backed Gull size rings. In the hand you cannot get much of an idea of primary projection, jizz, etc and it can be very difficult. This bird had a gentle expression and not the angry look of a Glauc. It also had a comparatively small bill to the head which again suggested Iceland.

I questioned it on ringing it for a couple of reasons – bulk and the streaking on the head (which you can only see close up) which lean more towards Glauc but at the time it was believed to be in the range for a large male Iceland so that is what we decided it was!

The photos in the field from Northants prompted me to recheck all the measurements – and I found they were actually out of the range for Iceland and in the range for Glaucous.”

So, in-hand birds, ‘lifted’ from their normal habitat, can appear quite different to how they look in the field.  Many thanks to Paul for sharing his comments, images and providing an insight into the activities of the NTGG.

With winter approaching, Martin Elliott is resuming his gull ID and ageing classes in both Cornwall and Northamptonshire.

 Contact Martin at martinelliott.sennen@googlemail.com

Possibly. I was driving back from a meeting in St Neots when, at about 4 pm, the phone buzzed and a tweet from Steve Fisher flashed up: Azorean type ad layby islands stanwick @bonxie #northantsbirds By good fortune I was just turning on to the A45 at Higham Ferrers …

Still under observation by Steve, accompanied by Bob Webster, the bird was on the nearest part of the island to the causeway which divides the A45 Lay-by Pit. Although largely against the light, and hampered by the blustery wind, I was able to shoot some video through my scope during the time the bird was present. At about 4.20 pm it flew off north over the willow scrub and appeared to be heading toward the main lake, where large gulls regularly gather in the late afternoon prior to roosting elsewhere. A quick walk round to the lake drew a blank. The gull was nowhere to be seen.

This is not the first adult gull showing characteristics of the altlantis race of Yellow-legged Gull. There have been two before – both at Stanwick GP. Remember the last one from September 2013? See here for a discussion on ID features of that bird and UK status and some thoughts.

Today’s individual appears almost, if not completely, identical although this time we have a clear view of the legs, which are a deep, rich ochre, not bright yellow.

And there’s that broad, dark grey band on the underside of the secondaries extending on to the primaries again. Is that significant? Is it also coincidence that individuals turning up here also have that striking bill pattern of largely ‘dirty’ dull base contrasting strongly with extensive and prominent orange gonys spot, sandwiched between blackish subterminal band and yellow tip? What are these birds if they are not Azorean Gulls … ? Comments welcomed.

Martin Elliott will again be running his gull ID and ageing classes in both Cornwall and Northamptonshire, commencing this month …

Contact Martin at martinelliott.sennen@googlemail.com

 

Yesterday, in the last hour of daylight, Martin Elliott found a promising candidate for a second-winter American Herring Gull on the Watersports Pit at Ditchford GP,  immediately west of Ditchford Lane. Fittingly, this was during one of Martin’s gull ageing and ID courses he is running throughout the winter, based out of Stanwick Lakes visitor centre a couple of miles east along the Nene Valley! 

The bird was present again on the Watersports Pit, where I saw it albeit briefly, at 11.45 this morning before it flew off in the direction of Viaduct Pit, immediately to the west. It’s a distinctive and interesting-looking bird. Obviously dark compared to Herring Gulls of the same age, dark lower breast/belly, noticeably dark upperparts and black primaries, blackish tail with heavily barred uppertail coverts, bi-coloured bill, small grey ‘triangle’ of feathers on mantle and strikingly dark underwing. Martin’s notes say it all in detail and I would like to thank him for sharing them here.

Good quality photographs and/or video would be useful in helping to provide a fully detailed analysis and hopefully the bird will stick around long enough to allow this to be made possible.

1st December is officially the first day of winter and the first Iceland Gull of the season has already appeared at Ditchford Gravel Pits. Many birders find gull identification problematic although it need not be so. Help is at hand!

From 13th December, and on various weekends throughout the winter, confirmed Laridophile and gull ID aficionado Martin Elliott will be running gull identification field classes at Stanwick Gravel Pits, using the visitor centre as base. So now you’ve got no excuse …

Atlantis is not just a myth … but there is some doubt as to whether or not ‘real’ Azorean Yellow-legged Gulls Larus michahellis atlantis are occurring in the UK. There have been several good candidates in recent years, including this one, but this distinctive subspecies is still not (yet) officially on the British list. And then there’s always the spectre of variants and hybrids …

Although its vagrancy potential is not in doubt, its potential as a future split is. According to Philippe Dubois (2001), from a genetic perspective, no differences have been found in mitochondrial DNA between nominate michahellis and atlantis – even in the Azorean population. Using other forms of genetic analysis, however, some differences have been found between ‘Atlantic’ Yellow-legged Gulls from the continent (the wider range of atlantis beyond the Azores) and michahellis from the Mediterranean – so who knows!

This one at Stanwick was found by UK gull aficionado Martin Elliott, an ex-Northants birder who also found the country’s first atlantis, in Cornwall, in 2008. The Stanwick bird was present for only a few minutes in the pre-roost on the main lake early in the evening of Friday 27th September before flying off east. Subsequent pre-roost vigils by a handful (surprisingly a very small handful!) of local birders over the following four consecutive evenings drew a blank.

Looks good, the densely streaked, sharply demarcated hood is spot on and draws immediate attention. The mantle colour was said to be between Yellow-legged Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull (although it does not appear so obvious in the images) and the main flight shot shows a mirror on primary P10 with no mirror on P9. Overall the bird appeared a little stockier than Yellow-legged Gull, of which a record 135+ were counted at the site during the same evening.

All three of Martin’s images reproduced here show a bird with a prominent, broad, dark grey band on the underside of the secondaries extending on to the primaries. Yellow-legged also shows this to some variable extent but can it ever be as prominent as on this individual? This was also a feature on the Oxfordshire bird of October 2009, for which see here, so maybe it’s a function of the darker upperparts or it may not be at all related – either way, is it a potentially useful ID feature for adults of this form?

This is an interesting bird which may well still be lurking among the thousands of gulls currently roaming around in the River Nene Valley. Sidegate Landfill and Ditchford GP may pay dividends if visited now rather than in winter, when local birders traditionally step up their efforts to find white-winged gulls.

Many thanks to Martin for finding a potential first for Northamptonshire and for the use of his images

 

During late afternoon on Monday 22nd April, Steve Fisher was birding at his local patch, Stanwick Gravel Pits, when, at about five o’clock, he discovered a second calendar year (first-summer) Ring-billed Gull in the north-east corner of the main lake. Accompanying Lesser Black-backed and Common Gulls it was on the water and in the shallows only briefly, some distance from the hide. Steve managed a few distant record shots just before it got up and flew east.

The images give a little of what was seen well in the field when compared with Common Gull, i.e. the fuller head with flatter crown, less placid appearance contributed to in part by the heavier, light pink bill with sharply demarcated dark tip (recalling first-winter Glaucous Gull) and paler grey mantle than Common Gull.

This is only the 12th record of Ring-billed Gull for Northants and, interestingly enough, Steve found the first – an adult – way back in 1984 at nearby Ditchford GP. The previous records are:

1984 29th March, adult, Ditchford GP                                                                                      1991 28th November, first-winter, Stanford Res                                                                    1993 30th October & 4th November, first-winter, Boddington Res                                            1994 12th November, first-winter, Daventry CP                                                                    1998 24th February-2nd March, adult, Welford Tip                                                              2000 13th January-3rd February, adult, Welford Tip                                                                2000 8th March, second-winter, Daventry CP                                                                      2001 31st January, adult, Daventry CP                                                                                  2001 9th-16th February, adult, Naseby Res/Welford Tip                                                    2008 27th February & 7th-9th March, adult, Boddington Res                                            2011 9th March, adult, Boddington Res