Today and Yesterday

For the first time in a few days I was looking forward to getting out birding nice and early. Very chilly, with clear skies and a light NW, finally a respite from the wind and rain. Cogden looked fantastic...

Sunrise...

In the end it was just a nice walk with loads of vis-mig. I didn't see or hear anything especially notable, but headed off to work nicely refreshed...

Around 14:00 a message appeared on the patch WhatsApp group to the effect that a Crane was on view from the Colyford Common hide! I wasn't in a position to do much about that news, but some time later made sure I passed a handy viewpoint en route to my next job. No joy. I wasn't bothered though. Likely it would be one of those Great Crane Project birds, virtually plastic. We had one on the Axe a few years back, but thankfully I saw a 'proper' one with Phil in December 2004, several years before they were being released willy-nilly on the Somerset Levels. Even so, after work I stopped off at Coronation Corner and had a scan up the river, where I heard it was seen most recently. And indeed, there it was. The time was 16:45 and the light was dreadful, so I only bothered with a distant record shot. With a massive bird like a Crane you don't need too many pixels for a record shot...

And there it is, showing beautifully above the depth gauge.

So, yesterday...

On Twitter I follow a chap called Thomas Miller, a birder based in Oxfordshire. Oxon gets a good helping of Caspian Gulls and Thomas frequently posts photos of local birds. Yesterday he shared a couple of close shots of a super-smart first-winter Casp. It reminded me ever so much of the beaut that I saw at East Bexington a few weeks back. And then a ludicrous thought occurred. It couldn't be the same bird could it? I looked closer...and immediately spotted a single grey feather in the greater coverts...exactly like my bird. Surely not?! I quickly pulled up my photos to check...

The 1w Casp at East Bex on 5/10

Thomas has kindly let me nick his photos...

Same bird at Farmoor Res on 3/11 (compare greater coverts as ringed in photo above)

 

And check out the beautifully pale underwing...

What a cracking gull!

One more photo. This particular individual demonstrates perfectly why you can often describe Caspian Gulls as being 'on stilts'...

Mega-stilts! Thomas took this photo on 31/10. Also at Farmoor Res.

Apparently this bird has been in the area since at least 17th October, when it was seen by Ian Lewington on the tip at Didcot, just 12 days after my encounter with it at East Bexington. Thomas has photographed it loafing on wet fields at Appleford, and at the Farmoor roost.

I was absolutely delighted to learn all this. Finding out where 'your' birds go is such a buzz for gull watchers. And it illustrates one of the reasons I love them so much - they are just so mobile! A quality gull might appear almost anywhere...

East Bex to Appleford (90 miles) to Farmoor (8.6 miles)

I'll close with one last record shot of the Crane. This was taken at 17:06; it was almost dark. I was curious to see what the P900 could manage. Zoomed up to 500mm, rested carefully on my scope and shot with a 2-second timer delay...

1/5 sec at ISO 1600

Identifiable. Just.

I almost forgot to mention...

The Crane turned out to be unringed. However, as I understand it this may not necessarily mean it's definitely not from the release scheme. Birders find this kind of detail very annoying. I sympathise. Being a birder, I would...