Bonaparte's Gull ~ Heliport Bay, Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales ... 04.03.12

Monday 12 March 2012

After a recce of the site in the morning, we returned mid afternoon as it was nearing hide tide hopefully for the Bonaparte's Gull.
A few hundred black-heads were resting on the rocks with larger Larid's either feeding or on the sea. We were viewing from the Heliport side right across to the Water Treatment Works side with the gull's resting on the rocks beneath the treatment works, it was far from easy picking it out from the black-heads but once located (45 mins) !!! We moved around for a closer look not sure why we didn't do that sooner but never mind !!
It was still at distance even from were we had moved to, needing the 2x convertor to get some record images ...
Views that we did have were prolonged and the id features of the bird compared to the black-heads were now easy to pick-up on.
The size difference wasn't that noticeable at distance but the pale under wing and neat black trailing edge showed easily.

Bonaparte's Gull
 






Great weekend again ...