Glauc-coma

Funny how when you keep putting off blogging more and more stuff happens til you're veritably constipated with material, happenings, 'sources' and so on. In short it's been a while and there's been a fair bit seen birdwise during this interim, which I shall now 'lay it down on ya' like a real old time G.



Check out those particles!

A stormy period made everything go nuts including the sand up at Bar Point where a wander round those ends produced the customary Great Big F##k Off Northern Divers are still hanging out looking hard while the sheltered coastlines held little beside Little Egret, Whimbrel and Common Gull. No white-wingers as was hoped..

Little Egret 'arty' shot, notice how I used blur to accentuate the ghost like properties of this species...ahem

Pretty rare shot of a Sparrowhawk right there, one of the regular duo rounds there ere parts.

Besides my largely maritime bias of late when it came to birding my internal affairs have been some of the most productive affairs with a casual cut through Holy Vale providing views of Long-eared Owl at 0ft in daylight as it flushed from besides the path, what a silent stonker! Meanwhile at Longstone...our efforts came good with 2 Firecrest spending a short time feeding in the sun providing, need I say it, #Crippling views!

Deary me that's a good looking bird.

With cold northerlies dominating birdlife seemed to be almost non-existent across the St. Marys so it was down to Lower Moors for some avian anomalies with 11 Snipe probing the scrapes a welcome sight after such high water levels recently. But its winter! What's your highlight?! A warbler! Obviously. There seems to be 'several' Siberian Chiffs around of which I've maybe seen a couple, and they're good. Really freaking proper!

If that was in September would people be shouting Greenish?

My final paragraph refers to this afternoons activities, as with some free time I decided to go dip on white-wingers for the nth time down at Porthloo/Shark's Pit and after some persistent (not desperate ahem) scanning a hulk emerged! And quickly crystallised into a Glaucous Gull in my camera viewfinder. Just a bloody well to as I only had my bins and the bird was a distant white speck, which had it not flown, I would never have seen due to rocks and gulls and me being unobservant etc. Anyway the pics below are up to and including 96x magnification so won't win any prizes. But you can see how monster it is! And how short the primary projection is, how large the bill is blah blah..

Presumably the 'immature' seen a couple of weeks back, this bird looks to probably be 2nd winter ish, hope it sticks around and lets me eyeball it again!