A strange gull roost

Iceland gull, 2nd winter

A strange gull roost at Pennington Flash this afternoon, for a long time there seemed to be more birders than birds, with 10 scopes looking out over the flash where the only birds present were a handful of very distant large gulls in Ramsdales and 50 or so black-headed gulls coming to bread even more distantly on the car park.

Then at 16:25, and with the centre of the flash still flat calm and devoid of gulls, the fog rolled in and we could see even less and with sunset at 16:28, the afternoon seemed to be over. Miraculously though after a 5 minute white out the fog lifted, and though there were still very few birds compared to some roosts, a flock of a few hundred black-headed gulls and perhaps a couple of hundred large gulls was revealed quite close to us.

Scanning through the flock in what little daylight remained we managed to pick out the 2nd winter Iceland gull, 3rd winter yellow-legged gull, adult Mediterranean gull and best of all my first ever roosting adult winter little gull. Of course I have seen this species at the flash before, usually on early spring passage in March or April, but I've never actually managed to see one in the roost before so a decent night all round. No sign of the now regular Caspian gull, but it may well still be around. Three different species of white winged gull in the same roost, it's a pity that a glaucous gull didn't turn up to complete the set. Surely that really would have been a Pennington Flash record!

Yellow-legged gull, 3rd winter

Mediterranean gull. This photo of the long staying adult was taken on 23/12/2017, its hood is a little more complete now.