Slip sliding away

The Safari’s early morning jaunt gave us the still sleeping Peregrine and a different(?) Song Thrush, this one was singing from the park while the usual two(?) were silent. In fact almost everything was silent bar a couple of Robins.
Dunno what’s happened to ‘Pool last night...predicted the right score just got it the wrong way round certainly wasn’t expecting them to be so resoundingly beaten at home by bottom of the league West Ham. Not only that but they seem to have forgotten how to score in open play, their last three goals coming form set-pieces, although Charlie Adam did score direct from a corner which is pretty cool and not easy to do.
Now they really need to pick up a few quick points and get to 35 soon so there’s not too much to do in the last few games of the season. 28 points from 24 games equates to a finishing tally of 44 points which is easily enough to avoid relegation but a win soon is desperately needed.
This morning on Patch 2 the gull fest continued but almost all of them were way down to the south where the beach was literally covered in gulls and Oystercatchers as the tide rose. Well over a couple of thousand of each. The nearest congregation of large gulls held an adult Yellow Legged Gull but surely amongst the enormous numbers there must have been one or two more ‘odd-ones-out’. A shallow pool held over 500 roosting Black Headed Gulls but they were too tightly packed and too distant to pick anything different out. A few Sanderlings skittered along the beach in front of the on-rushing tide and about 50 Redshanks were getting ready to roost on the sea wall where several Turnstones had already chosen the prime spots. Out to sea was nothing more than a grey murk with very few Cormorants and even less of anything else.
At lunchtime the tide was dropping but little was happening. To the south the bright sun and hazy aftermath of sea spray made looking that way difficult. A few Black Headed Gulls found something interesting caught in the surf and looked sort of ‘arty-farty’ against the bright back light and with the waves adding a bit of action.

Here are some more pics from yesterday, sorry they aren’t brilliant, dull, moving subjects and at continuous firing the camera knocks down the quality a notch or two – any old excuse really.

Herring Gull and 'friend'
1st winter Common Gull and Black Headed Gull

1st winter Common Gull

Black Headed Gull

1st winter Herring Gull

Adult Herring Gull

Adult Common Gull

Adult Common Gull

Adult Herring Gull, very similar wing tip pattern to the adult Herring Gull above but with a more defined black sub-terminal band on P10 and a fairly substantial subterminal band on P5

Couple of short bits of vid from yesterday for you too.

Went back out for a look when the tide had fallen a bit to check if the Black Headed Gulls were feeding on the fish in the shallows again but again we left it too late and the tide was well down the beach.
Where to next? Might be somewhere with no gulls for a change...somehow we doubt it!!!
In the meantime let us know what you were too late for in your outback