City Challenge update and a Landfill site near you? Pink legged Gull!!

-
Here is a quick update on the City Challenge. I added a couple more ticks last week in the form of Kingfisher and Chiffchaff with both seen at Watermead CP South. With these sightings my total is now 77 species.

On Saturday I nipped over to a new Landfill site in the company of Steve James just over the border into Lincolnshire at Stainby. Although it wasn't on par with Albert Village and Shawell, good numbers of gulls were noted in the nearby fields. Also what was good about this site was the number of Red Kites recorded here, we had at least 10 birds circling and feeding at the tip during the two hours we were there!
Getting back to the gulls, one interesting Lesser black-backed Gull was observed in the flock just because it had pink-coloured legs!! I'm not saying it's something special but a reminder that Gulls can be so different!
Any way after visiting this site we checked out a few sites in the Vale of Belvoir and made a mental note to visit these sites in the next couple of months for Butterflies and Orchids!
After that it was back to Leicester to watch a bit of rugby and the Irish stuff England on how to play running rugby, but that's another story!
Pink coloured legged LBB Gull!
Red Kite at Stainby Landfill site! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ring-billed Gull OMFL!!!

-
Image
Meeting up with Neil Hagley this afternoon at Shawell Balancing Lake almost the first gull I looked at was an Adult Ring-Billed Gull . Just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating I ask Neil to have a look at this gull in my scope and he came to the same conclusion. GET IN!!! So over the next half an hour we ticked off all the salient features of the bird and then phoned out the news. As this was probably only the sixth record for Leicestershire and Rutland as you can imagine I took quite a few digishots of the gull. Joined later by the Groby crew (Allen, Andy F and Paul) just before the Ring-billed Gull flew off towards the tip, it wasn't long before the group picked at least 3 Yellow-legged Gulls and 3 Caspian Gulls (2 Adults and 1 2nd-winter bird) in the large gull flock. So to put this sighting of the Ring-billed Gull in context, it's probably only the sixth time it has been recorded in the county.It was a county tick for myself, Neil and the Groby crew and Ring-billed G
Read more

A few bird photos over the last few months...

-
Image
 Over the last year I bought myself a new Leica lens (100-400mm) for my Panasonic Lumix G9 Camera, so here's a few photos I have taken over the last few months. First up the long staying Lesser Yellowlegs at Frampton Marsh RSPB. Next up the Northern Waterthrush at Heyford, Essex...    and finally for the time being one of the Yellow-browed Warbler at Oakthorpe, Leicestershire in Early January 2024.
Read more

Cut End Seawatch, Lincs 16th Sept 2009.

-
After finishing my early shift at the general, I drove over to Cut End, which is the Witham/Wash river mouth(Basically were the river meets the sea!), near Boston, Lincs. I was told that the the best time to go was around hide tide with a north-east blow to push the birds close towards the river mouth. Arriving at the Cut End Hide at around 5.00pm in the middle of high tide, I joined the group of birders who watching the sea. My sightings of the next couple of hours included: 16 Arctic Skuas, 1 Bonxie, 1 Fulmar, 10+ Sandwich Terns, at least 30+ Eiders, a single Common Scoter (10 metres off the hide!) and good numbers of the usual waders. Scanning the nearby salt marshes I also picked up at least 7 Marsh Harriers , and over 40 Little Egrets . Although I couldn't pick up the long staying King Eider at this site due to the choppy conditions I was pleased what I had seen at this new site for me and would visit it again as soon as possible. As I walked back to the car the final sightin
Read more