Second (and first) winter herring gulls (oops!)

Well if that isn't a great headline I don't know what is...

Thought that since the blog had already strayed into a few areas of impossibly speculative identifications this week (e.g. Nordic Jackdaw and Mealy Redpoll only yesterday) then I may as well post these pictures of second winter Herring Gulls photographed at Nimmo's Pier, Galway, on 28 December. My aging and subspecific identification of these Herring Gulls is tentative, as there is a bewildering array of plumage types and patterns out there...

This first bird is possibly of the northern argentatus subspecies as it was a bulkier bird in direct comparison to other similarly aged birds (though maybe it is just a large male?) and it has heavily marked scapular feathers. Its wing coverts were unusually uniform in colour and a little more bleached compared to most others. How common is that?

Hmm... I am now beginning to wonder whether I have aged this bird correctly. I aged it as a second winter based on the heavily worn rounded tips to the primaries. However, looking at almost all other features of the plumage, it appears to be a first winter and now that I have considered it as a first winter - it seems perfect, and the primary tips on closer inspection are slightly pointed. So, scratch the comment above, this is not an unusual second winter with retained juvenile coverts, it is a first winter that appears to have more abraded primaries than normal. Ok... let's move on...

The next bird was only seen in flight but had a grey background colour, a finely barred rump and fairly uniform wings. I think that it has been suggested that birds with this plumage could be reasonably common among the Icelandic argenteus population, but that they are not restricted to that area. It is also possible that some argentatus may look like this. Any ideas?

I enjoyed photographing the next bird, which caught my eye as it had a slightly more advanced moult of its silvery mantle feathering and a whiter head. I think that it may be from a less northerly population to have progressed its moult - although of course there is much individual variation - but I'm going to guess its a local argenteus bird. It also showed a darker and more finely vermiculated greater covert bar than most of the other birds in the group and a strongly dark leading edge of the wing - both characters are shared with the bird above.

Enough for now... If you know more about large white-headed gulls than me, which is quite likely, then please do drop me a line and maybe I could add some more informative captions!

Lothian ticks: Nordic Jackdaw and Mealy Redpoll

Took my sandwiches for a walk at the Braid Hills at lunchtime, since it was a nice day. Turned out to be a good decision.

Not only did I add fly-over Grey Wagtail, Collared Dove and 8 Stock Doves to my Lothian year list (about time for these three species!) but I managed to self-find a couple of Lothian life ticks.

Okay, so Nordic Jackdaw is not considered a full species, and I have probably seen it in Lothian already (see here for Lothian possibles and two more definite birds in Galway) - but it has been one of my target subspecies over this winter. The partial collars of both of these presumed monedula can be seen quite clearly here, although they did looked better in real life than in these cropped photos!

Note the 'headlamp' effect when this bird is viewed from the front. This was reminiscent of the Straiton carpark bird in March 2010. Quite possibly today's bird will look even more striking by March as feather wear is likely to enhance the pale collar.

The other Lothian tick was a Mealy Redpoll (right and below) at long, long last. Probably the biggest 'hole' in my county list (still plenty to fill...) - somehow previously I have avoided clapping eyes on a flammea Redpoll in Lothian. In past years most of my Redpoll sightings have been unidentified fly-over birds, or the breeding species, Lesser Redpoll.

With the current invasion of Mealy Redpolls into Britain, on the other hand, I was fairly confident that I could find one within easy walking distance of the house, and sure enough, today I found a small group of Redpolls in trees at the edge of the Braid Hills Golf Course. The first two I looked at were clearly Lesser Redpolls, as they were very brown with strong buff tips to their wing coverts.

The third bird was bigger, paler, with a longer tail and a lovely long primary projection crossing over the tail.

It then moved to another tree and showed nice pale tramlines, bold white covert bars and a strikingly white rump. This is as mealy a Mealy Redpoll as it is possible to get. It is so far along the scale that the potential confusion species is not cabaret Lesser Redpoll but instead exilipes Coues' Arctic Redpoll (see elsewhere on this blog for more about Redpolls).
















Of course exilipes can be a difficult form to identify, but in this case the mantle and flank streaking of this bird is too strong and the structure of the bird is better for Mealy Redpoll. Note that the picture on the left gives an inaccurate impression of a small bill - in life the bird had a normal sized and shaped bill for a Mealy Redpoll.


The bird then dived into the centre of a large thick hawthorn and gave a brief view of its nice white rump feathers raised (just visible in picture on left) - a pretty good feature for exilipes perhaps, but in fairness just as good for a male flammea. And then it was gone. Redpolls are like that...

So, a great walk with some great birds. What could top that. Well another few de-pigmented Carrion Crows. Here's one in flight carrying, accidentally (I presume), a dead oak leaf.

Greylag geese at Alnwickhill

During lunchtime I nipped to Alnwickhill Water Treatment Works, which is nearby and a loafing spot for gulls. There were few around today, probably as a result of the heavy machinery operating in the area. Edinburgh's new water supply pipe is being laid just next to the site, and when it is connected the treatment plant will be redundant. Not sure what the various gulls, Northern Lapwings and wildfowl will do then. Certainly, I don't think there will be many suitable alternatives for them in the immmediate neighbourhood. Of course, I think that one of the reasons for the new pipe is the unwanted combination of flocks of birds floating around on Edinburgh's drinking water.

Today's highlight was a small flock of Greylag Geese in a field next to the works. I haven't seen them here before, although I have seen small numbers of Canada Geese on the filter beds.

Of course Greylag Geese can be seen year round at Duddingston Loch at the base of Arthur's Seat, and that is probably where these birds are from. I do see the Duddingston birds over the house fairly frequently.

On the other hand, they just might be real wild birds born and bred in Iceland. I do see skeins of those (I presume) high overhead once in a while, though not as often as the Pink-footed Geese.

Today's Greylags certainly looked a bit smarter and behaved a bit wilder than this bird I photographed at Duddingston Loch earlier in the year. It was suffering from a deformity or damage to its bill which appeared to be giving it some trouble preening - a very unkempt look indeed.

Blue Monday

Today is the most depressing day of the year, or so the radio told me this morning. It is because it is the third Monday of the year apparently. Well, if that's true, wouldn't it be better to tell us all towards the end of the day, or even better have it as a good news story tomorrow - Headline: It's official!! All remaining days in year better than yesterday!

Birdwise they might have had a point as all I managed to glimpse in the garden today was a Woodpigeon and a Pheasant. Actually, the latter is a good bird in the garden but thinking about it that's pretty depressing if the avifauna of my garden is so poor that a category C1E species is a highlight...

So how to cheer up? If it is Blue Monday maybe some blue birds are the answer? After all, two species of blue birds were highlights for me in 2010.

The first, the Western Bluebird is the first of the Sialia bluebirds that I have managed to catch up with. This particular male was seen on our first full day in California in April. It is a jaw-dropping combination of vivid blue, orange, white and chestnut. Just one of those birds that is more mouthwatering in the field than in the field guide.

The female may be a little more subdued, but the male is so bright that it could only lift the spirits.

Oh, hang on, that habitat doesn't look very nice - a little off-putting with the barbed wire... And what is that little sign next to the picnic table. Oh, dear me, that's not very nice...

Well, ignore that blue bird, what about the other one. Fast forward to 16 October - I am on Fair Isle and happily photographing Mealy Redpolls in Tommy's garden at the Auld Haa when I get a shout - Red-flanked Bluetail on Ward Hill! Now I'm one of those non-twitching, low-listing birders who is quite happy to stare at a couple of Herring Gulls for a few hours, but the shout of RFB turned me into a raving twitcher ready to mow down any sheep that got in my way. After a red flag lift in the van up to the airport and then a near sprint up the side of Ward Hill to the area, all the birders on the island were assembled for that Fair Isle field craft technique - the mass flush! After some nerve-wracking minutes the bird gave up and sat for the next hour quivering (its tail) next to a rabbit hole. So absolutely amazing scope views of a RFB for a whole hour!

Here's my phonescoped pic. Oh, how come that picture is soooooo bad? Arghh, how depressing, it was there for a whole hour and that was the best I can do. Oh I can't believe I'm so bad at this. That must but the worst Red-flanked Bluetail picture on the whole web...

Colour ringed godwits and egret

A family wedding in north Norfolk in August gave me a rare opportunity to grab a few hours birding along the coast between Stiffkey and Cley. A strong south-westerly ensured that the mouthwatering selection of rares and scarce migrants that I had been hoping for failed to materialise (other than a probable Richard's Pipit west over Stiffkey early one morning). Nevertheless, compared with the norm at East Lothian, I was impressed with the Mediterranean feel that the Norfolk coast now has with its smattering of Eurasian Spoonbills, Little Egrets and Avocets. Quite a change since my more regular trips there in the late eighties and early nineties.

One of the nice things about birding in north Norfolk is how easy it can be to observe large numbers of birds at relatively close range without disturbing them. One advantage of this is that it increases the chances of noticing and reading colour ring combinations. At Stiffkey Fen on 22 August I noted a couple of Black-tailed Godwits colour ringed above the 'knee'. Using the colour ring website, the relevant ringing group could be tracked down easily.

I heard today from Vigfús Eyjólfsson in Iceland that LO-OR (left leg: lime above orange; right leg: orange above red) was ringed as a pullus (chick) in northern Iceland in 2004, spent the winter of 05-06 at Wexford Slobs, was seen in Friesland in the Netherlands the following spring before being noted at Frodsham in Cheshire the following autumn. In winter 08-09 it was seen at Marshside in Lancashire, before being seen in the Netherlands again the following spring. Since late summer 2010 it had been seen at Titchwell and Cley on thirteen dates before this sighting at Stiffkey Fen. Of course, from ringing studies we know that all Icelandic Black-tailed Godwits make equivalent journeys to this bird, but it always seems especially remarkable to find out this sort of history about any individual bird observed in the field.

LO-OR may well be in the foreground of the above pictures. Note the 'action shot' of the Spoonbill in the lower image...

The same morning I had seen this Little Egret which had been standing in a pool on the public coastal footpath near Morston Quay. Its colour ring combination was Left: orange 6; right: yellow F. This bird had been ringed in Terrington St Clement, Norfolk, earlier in 2010 as a nestling. I had seen a similar dispersing juvenile at Aberlady Bay in East Lothian on 11 August, one of several that moved through the county this year. How long until they decide to stay I wonder?

A buzzard's tail

I have been trying to get a photograph of this Common Buzzard's uppertail for quite a few weeks. After having seen an intriguing buzzard at Barn's Ness earlier in the autumn, I thought I would try spend more time studying the plumage of the local birds.

This regular bird in the Hermitage of Braid, Edinburgh, caught my attention with its clean white underwings. This feature, combined with its apparently rufous uppertail, is more typical in eastern forms (vulpinus). Of course the plumage of Common Buzzard is very variable and the compact structure of this individual tells us that it is likely to be a local bird (buteo). That it is not particularly massive suggests that it is possibly a male.

This photo was taken in early December. The pale flight feathers with fine bars may be more typical of vulpinus than buteo, but the dark brown rather than reddish coverts along with the diffuse border of the dark trailing edge of the wing are more typical of buteo. Structurally it appears to be a perfect buteo, with no suggestion of vulpinus. Notice that it has lost the tip of primary 9 on its left wing.

 

I next managed to see the same bird a month later - its missing primary tip obvious as it passed over. The pale flight feathers were emphasised by the dark trailing edge but the uppertail and upperwing was not visible.

 The following day it drifted past again over a ridge.

 This time I glimpsed some complex upperwing detail.

 Then it lost some height and gave a quick hint of a rufous tail before disappearing behind trees.

The next sighting was earlier this week. The buzzard was the target of this mass mobbing event by 20 Carrion Crows, 6 Rooks and 4 Jackdaws. I left them to it as I felt that the bird already had enough problems without me adding to them.

Finally, today I managed to get a reasonable view of the uppertail as well as a couple of record shots. My suspicion that the bird had some rufous in its tail proved correct.

The shots with the spread tail show that the outer web of each feather has darker pigmentation, whereas each inner web is reduced in dark pigment and appears whiter and allows the underlying rufous colouration to show through. This, I think, is a fairly common tail pattern in buteo. Nevertheless, this tail, when combined with strong pale bases of the primaries made for a surprisingly contrasty upperpart colouration - well worth the patient stalk in my opinion.

Here's hoping...

So, a Slaty-backed Gull has finally been seen in Britain, with a bird found in Rainham, London, yesterday and confirmed today. Well done to Dominic Mitchell of Birdwatch magazine for being the first to find this long-awaited Pacific species. Since it is unlikely that I'll be making my way down to London to see this bird, I'm hoping that it takes a shine to capital cities and heads up to Edinburgh (though I do hope it hangs around for those who are travelling to see it this weekend).

For gull seekers there are still plenty of species that haven't yet been seen in Britain. With every new addition, the list of possibles somehow seems to increase, as the vagrancy potential of the larger and more robust species is underlined. One species that appears to be spreading in this direction is the Kelp Gull, a southern hemisphere species that has colonised coastal Senegambia and now been recorded in Morocco. How long before the first European record I wonder? That said, it would be fairly easy to overlook... Here are a couple of shots of a moulting adult and a first winter along with some other species typical of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. All pictures taken in April 2007.

This adult bird is re-growing its outer primaries so it has an atypically blunt-winged look. Note also that the fresh feathers have much larger white tips than on the birds illustrated in Olsen and Larsson's Gulls.

 

The full length of the primaries of the first winter (2CY) Kelp Gull can be seen in the first shot of this below. Note the typically dull leg colour of this species, which is greenish grey in the adult.

Of course, I didn't quite manage a decent shot of this admittedly rather grotty looking gull as I was having much more fun photographing the awesome African Penguins at their Boulders Beach breeding colony.

 

 

All the birds in the area, including the Black Oystercatcher, Common Fiscal Shrike or Red-winged Starling below, seemed to have had the same make-over - all monochrome with an accent colour or bit of artistic shading!

 
And finally, what could be more appropriate at the Cape of Good Hope?