The safari was given the tip off of a Glaucous Gull on the local park lake this afternoon. Apparently it had been there since early morning and I was incomunicado working away in the garden. Eventually we saddled up Frank and high-tailed it to the park. This is a toughy, during my 15 years on the reserve I never saw one, never even got near one! In fact it is not even on my 'Fylde' list - this was a 'must see' bird.
Why is it when you're in a hurry you get a shed loads of dweebs.? We had to stop for fuel...dweeb taking ages to put a tenner of fuel in his Mitsusuchi dweebmobile and took even longer to pay, dweeb doing 20mph when 30 was easily achievable...guess what... they managed to get to within 100 yards of the traffic lights and every one turned to red...GET A MOVE ON DWEEBS... some of us have got places to go; birds to tick...Sheeewhizz they drive me mad!!!
Once at the park lake there were very few larger gulls. Two Mediterranean Gulls had also been seen but a very thorough check of the many Black Headed Gulls did not reveal them. there were a few Common Gulls each checked very hopefully for Ring Billed Gull...guess what... yep, they were all Commons.
Quite a few duck were present including at least 65 Shoveler, a single drake Teal, a couple of dozen or so Pochard, and few Tufted Ducks; three Great Crested Grebes getting in to summer plumage were nice.
The trees and bushes produced very little; best was a small flock of Long Tailed Tits.
Where to next? Back to the park tomorrow morning to see if the 'Glauc' drops in for a wash and brush up after leaving its roost. Hope to get you a photo; touch wood, fingers etc crossed. Then a trip to the 'Porpoise Coast' - if I can get away from the desk.
In the meantime let us know what your worst dip has been. Boy have I had a few on the Fylde Montague's Harrier, Temminck's Stint and the almost - to me at least - invisible Storm Petrel amongst others.
2 comments:
What a great description of rushing to "just miss" a bird - it had me laughing! From what I understand the glaucous gull is more common in your area than the glaucous-winged gull?
Yep..only 2 records of G-W gull over here and those are possibly the same bird. Glaucous gull regular over the winter in small numbers usually around west coast ports particularly Scotland and Ireland and rubbish dumps. Bill Aspin gets them on 'his' dump thirty miles inland from here - see his blog in my links.
Dave
PS Any gull is a good gull - I never get tired off searching through 'em!
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