Avez-Vous un Cuppa?

Here is a few digishots of the gulls we saw in Shetland on the 22nd! These included 3 Glaucous Gulls at Shetland Fish Catch in Lerwick and the 1st winter Ring-billed Gull in Scalloway . One of the 2w Glaucous Gulls at Shetland Fish Catch .       1st w Ring-billed Gull at Scalloway.        

Here is a few record shots of the Glaucous Gull I saw at Albert Village Lake on the 9th.

Here is some video footage of the 3rd winter Glaucous Gull at Albert Village Lake I took yesterday. Enjoy!

Today I bought myself a late Christmas present in the form of the Nikon Coolpix S4000 for a spot of digiscoping! Although I need to figure out how to work the camera, this afternoon I filmed the long staying 3rd winter Glaucous Gull at Albert Village Lake. Other sightings on the lake included at least two adult Caspian Gulls and two  Yellow-legged Gulls (Adult and 2nd winter birds). Over the next few weeks hopefully the filming and digishots should get better?!

Over the last couple of days I've have been gull watching at Shawell GPs in the south of the county and Albert Village Lake and Tip in the north-west. At Shawell I found 2 Caspian Gulls (adult and 2nd winter birds) in the fields opposite the balancing lake (Ok it was in Warwickshire, but there did fly back into Leicestershire later!) Today I checked out Albert Village Lake and the tip and again for some reason, there was hardly any gulls on the lake. So once again I looked over the tip from Pick Wood. Although most of the gulls were a good distance away, after a few scans I picked up a 3rd winter Glaucous Gull on the banks of the tip. It was probably the bird I saw last week at Foremark Resv and as usual a took a few record shots of the bird. After that I phoned and texted the news out of the bird. So not a bad haul for the year so far, two white-wingers and at least four different Caspers in the space of a week! 3rd winter Glaucous Gull at Albert Village Tip. Adult Caspian ...

Yesterday I went to Albert Village Lake for my first visit of the year, and strangely there were hardly any gulls on the lake. So to cut a long story short I went and explored the nearby tip which you can look over via the local footpaths. Noticing that most of the gulls were at the far end of the tip I retraced my steps and then walked back towards the nearby national forest land which overlooks the tip. I started to scan the gulls from this viewpoint but nothing stood out except for a gull showing characteristics of Glaucous x Herring type!   With the gulls moving around the tip all the time, I then noticed more gulls roosting on a nearby bank and a very creamy looking gull which was head on to me at the time. I thought straight away that this bird looked good to be an Iceland Gull, due to the size and plumage of the bird. I waited for the bird to move and slowly it showed itself and the diagnostic features I saw included pure white primaries, blotchy creamy-white breast, ...

It's mid-week again so off I went to Shawell GPs to check out the gulls. The motive behind this was because of a 1st winter/Juvenile Glaucous Gull had been reported at Draycote Water, Warwickshire the previous day and as most of the gulls which roost at Draycote Water feed just across the county border at Shawell tip, so you can see the reason behind this. So arriving at the A5 pool at around 10.15am I was soon scanning the gulls by the busy roadside. Almost immediately I noticed the long-staying 2nd winter Med Gull and then the prize of the morning the Juvenile Glaucous Gull feeding and bathing by the shoreline. GET IN!!! Although it wasn't a first for the site, this sighting was probably the first at this site for over ten years!? ( 14/3/10: Actually having a better looked at my photos I now think the bird is a large Juvenile Iceland Gull!! and I made a basic mistake and jumped to the wrong conclusion ). As usual I made a few phone calls to let people know about the sight...

Adult Caspian Gull. 2nd Winter Caspian Gull. 2nd winter Glaucous Gull. Nipped over to Albert Village Lake again this morning and met up with Ben Croxtall and Andy Forryan. As the fog and mist slowly lifted we soon started picking up a good selection of large gulls. Over the next couple of hours we saw at least three Caspian Gulls ( 2 adult birds and a 2nd-winter bird ), the long-staying Mediterranean Gull , one adult Yellow-legged Gull and probably the highlight of the day the returning 2nd winter Glaucous Gull . I took a number of shots of the different gulls and came to the conclusion that the 2nd winter Glaucous Gull was a different bird from the one I had seen at this site previously in early January 2010. So back to work on tuesday and over the next couple of days I will spend more time down the Soar Valley as at the moment I have got my fix of gulls for at least a week!!

I finally connected with the 2nd winter Glaucous Gull at Albert Village Lake yesterday and here is some record shots of the bird. I think the bird spends quite a bit of time on the nearby tip as it took me over an hour to find the bird in the freezing conditions.

2nd Winter Kumlien's Gull at Shawell. Another shot of the Kumlien's Gull. 1st winter Iceland Gull at Shawell Balancing Lake. Another shots of the 1st winter Iceland Gull. Over the last couple of months it has been a great winter for seeing and finding white winged gulls like Iceland Gull and Glaucous Gull. As I normally recieved most of the local bird records for the fieldnotes in the LROS newsletter, it has been interesting reading over the last month or so. Up to the present day so far at least ten Iceland Gulls , 1 Kumlien's Gull and maybe 3 different Glaucous Gulls have been recorded in Leicestershire? With hopefully a couple of more weeks to check the local tips before most of the gulls disperse to there breeding grounds I would imagine a few more white-winged gulls maybe found?

2nd winter Glaucous Gull 2nd winter Iceland Gull Adult Iceland Gull After my exploits down in the south of the county looking for Iceland Gulls at Shawell tip I decide to check out Albert Village Lake in the extreme north-west of the county to see if there were any more Iceland Gulls to photo? So earlier this morning myself and Dave Mack (McWilliams) drove over to Albert Village to see if we could see any of the Iceland Gulls which had been reported over the last few days. Parking the car by the large locked car park, Dave suddenly realised that he had forgotten his bins and left them at home!! So Dave using my Nikon bins and me using my Kowa scope we walked down the track and slowly started scanning the gull flock from the shoreline. Within in about 5 minutes of scanning the large gull flock we found a 2nd winter Iceland Gull resting on the water! Pleased on finding this bird I took a few record shots as this was a new bird to be reported at this site. Scanning further along the line...