Glauc in the bag!

Me and my girlfriend have recently taken over the care of her dog, Abbie, who had lived at her parents house, but with the arrival of a new puppy, Abbie needed some peace and quiet so came to live with us. This means that on Saturday mornings I am on dog walking duty. The good thing about this is that she has always been walked down at Holme Pierrepont, so I am able to keep on birding my patch, whilst walking the dog too!

I don't fancy taking her on to the nature reserve as she'll only disturb the birds, and get bored when I stand around scanning the lake, so I'll conitnue walking her where she is used to, which is around the back of the watersports centre and the finger ponds. This is part of my patch I dont come to as regualrly, so it will be nice to get some birding done there and maybe see something different? Sadly the birdng isn't usually especially good round there, but it always seems like it has potential, with loads of scrub and waterbodies, as well as the river.

This morning I took her out and clocked up 39 species in just under 2 hours, including a patch year tick in the form of a Kingfisher and a few Feral Pigeon (get in!). 3 Little Egrets atop a tree near the viaducts opposite Netherfield lagoons were good too. There's some flooded rape fields there which are screaming out to be looked at, but aside from a flock of around 30 mute swans, the best it could offer otherwise were a load of canadas and greylags. 

Next up was a visit to Cotham Landfill, after dropping the pooch off home. I admit now that I am a beginner when it comes to gulling, although i've always had an interest. However this winter I've been reading up about them and perusing various sites, to get more used to identifying them. I ashamedly havent actually seen any of the 3 'scarce' white headed gulls (casp, iceland, glauc), so i'm attempting to remedy that.

Anyway, I arrived at Cotham at around 11:15 and there were quite a few gulls about, but the tip was closed for the day, so numbers were comparitvely low. I set about scanning, starting with a group on the far left hand side and within a few gulls time I clocked a 2nd winter Caspian. With my inexperience, I am still pretty wary when it comes to this species, but the posture of the bird, the head shape and long bill had me pretty convinced, especially as it was next to a load of herring gull and greater black backs for comparison, and it seemed to have a grey mantle, but with quite a few dark juvenile feathers still mixed in, hence my decision on a 2nd winter bird. After this a lot of the gulls disappeard so I focused in on the middle of the spoil heap where a few gulls were knocking about, and luckily, the first bird i focused on happened to be a 1st-winter Glaucous Gull. It remained there for a minute or so, before all of a sudden, all remaining gulls flew up and abandoned the site. I stayed for another 20 mins or so, but decided that must have been that, as I was looking at a gull-less dump. Upon reaching my car near the old railway bridge, I looked back and there seemed to be a load more large gulls flying towards the tip, but unfortunately I had to be back home... typical! Not a bad result though.