Sunday March 1

Sunny with a light north-westerly.

I arrived half an hour earlier than usual and had not got far from the car before things started to get tricky. Looking west I could see a couple of large gulls floating south in the distance. Then a small gull appeared, flying in the opposite direction. A Black-headed Gull was my first thought, but it looked very white and I began to wonder whether it could actually be a Little Egret. It was very low and kept disappearing behind a hedge in the foreground. Then it reappeared and I realised it had a black head, so a gull and not an egret. The head appeared jet black and I realised it could be an adult Med Gull...at last. The hedge intervened again, but the gull seemed to be losing height. I was sure it would end up on the flash field.

While I waited for Dave I checked the paddocks, counting 40 Redwings, and 36 Fieldfares. I moved up the slope to the track overlooking the landscape to the north and erected my scope. As I waited, I pondered on the gull. Should I call it or ditch it? I knew that if I claimed it there would always be a doubt in the back of my mind. Did I see it well enough? Were the wings really white? Was the head really jet black? I also knew that if I ditched it, I would always suspect I was far too cautious. Such is birding.

Dave arrived and took no persuading to join me in a route march straight to the flash field. Fifteen minutes later we were surveying not the expected field full of gulls, but an empty flash barring a Little Egret, two Shelducks, and a few Teal and Mallards. So annoying.

We tracked back along the Morton Brook, and flushed a pair of Stonechats which bizarrely flew up to the higher branches of a huge Ash. Shortly afterwards we found some gulls. Sadly they were all large gulls.

We needed a plan, and decided to walk to the road and swing back around in a large circle. This produced two Stonechats in the chat field, and a few more Teal in the flash field (but still only ten). More large gulls flew in and we counted 80 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and eight Herring Gulls. We kicked up the original two Stonechats again, so there were definitely four in total, and we reckon these two were migrants.

Stonechat

The field beyond Stapenhill Wood contained three smalls gulls with the large gulls. They were Black-headed Gulls but had winter-plumage heads. In the distance a massive flock of Starlings, we reckoned about 500 of them, hurried north.

So, the morning ended in frustration. The wait for a Med Gull here goes on.