This cracking 3rd winter yellow-legged gull was fresh in to the roost today, found by myself and John Tymon. Fortunately it came into the pre-roost in the east bay first at about 2:30pm, allowing us the opportunity to get a good look at it before we lost the daylight. It's a much more advanced individual than the regular 3rd winter, which has a darker bill and brown tertials. The new bird was present again the following day.
I've lost count of the total number of yellow-legged gulls there have been recently, John also had a 2nd winter today and the regular 3rd winter was present as well, but there have probably been at least five or six over the past three weeks, with at least two present on most days. It makes me wonder how many have been (and still are) overlooked.
Phonescoping is a great way to get distant shots of birds, these birds were probably a good 200-300m away and although this isn't the greatest quality photo, it's much better than I could ever get with my regular camera at that distance. Notice that even at such a distance you can still clearly see the differing eye colours of the two large gulls, which is often an important feature to aid identification.
However at close range the camera is much better. This is the regular 3rd winter yellow-legged gull. Note the plumage differences between this bird and the advanced bird at the top of this post.
This regular 3rd winter has a darker bill, brown tertials and only small white dots on the primaries. Both birds have glowing white heads though, and at this time of year they stand out like beacons amongst a flock of herring and lesser black-backed gulls which have heavily streaked heads, sometimes so extreme to appear as if they have dark hoods.
This adult Mediterranean gull was off the car park and occasionally came to bread. A really beautiful bird.
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