Ring-billed Gull ~ Gosport, Hampshire - 25.11.12

Never tire of photographing gull's and with the return of the Gosport adult bird in winter plumage for at least it's 11th winter what better target to aim for !!

Walpole Park, South Street

This clever bird's diet is aided by people coming to feed the swan's and with easy food available why not keep returning ...

Ring-billed Gull ~ ad.W

Larus delawarensis

Now compare to Summer Plumaged bird !!

Same bird and location taken 16.03.12

Yellow-Legged Gull ~ Jolly Farmers, Crayford, Kent - 20.11.12

It's that time again Gullfreaks when large Larus species start massing up near landfill sites and the clean white headed birds cause confusion !!

So en route to the timber yard, I did a slight detour to check the gulls at some waste ground, formerly Dusseks along side The Jolly Farmers Pub.

A great area, with Viridor, Clubbs, Rainham tip and the Council tip all close by.

The gulls rest up here and scanning through had 2 ad. + 1 1st.W Yellow-legged and a ad.W Med Gull.

Then I found a clean white headed bird, the YLG's had streaking compared to this bird. The bill's shape, colour, size and parallel sided bill differing from the YLG's.

The wing markings, far to much black and no pale tongues !!!

It seems to fit YLG !!

Eyes are really pale  ..

Yellow-Legged Gull ~ ad.W

To much black on the underwing for a Caspian  !!

Sabine's Gull ~ Dungeness, Kent - 05.08.12

We headed for Dungeness, with no target birds just to have a good day out.

Decided on the Arc Pit first trying for some waders but only the usual.

News on the pager of a Sabine's going over the beach at Rye was promising, so we headed towards the patch !!

We were getting our gear out of the car when a call from Martin ( thank you ) saying that Dave W has the gull on the beach near the Patch !!!!!!

A short walk along the ridge and there it was, a nice adult bird moulting out and way out on its own and resting in the tide line ...

We watched at distance, until it flew and began feeding close in, time to move and get some images !!!

Sabine's Gull

Note:  The bird has a cataract in it's right eye !!

The bird went and joined the mass of gulls near the patch and we went to the cafe ... We were hoping that with better light in the afternoon that maybe some improvements could be made but we stayed till early evening without any more sightings ..

Kittiwake

Sabine's Gull ~ Startop's End Reservoir, Buckinghamshire - 04.07.12

Really wanted better images of this gull species, so at first with dodgy weather and not many images coming on the web, I waited on the 2nd !!
Imagining it to be distant due to No images appearing ... 

The weather improved slightly on the 3rd but I still stayed at work, that evening better images came on-line ...

The 4th and the forecast was the same as it's been dull, the pager kept reporting all-day that it was still there, so by mid-afternoon, it was to much to take so a couple of texts went out and before long Me & Kev are on our way !!

The directions that we had were wrong but we got there eventually, and at first the 1st - summer bird was asleep out on a raft ... Not for long !!

It was feeding so close to us that the 500 wouldn't focus !!

A shame that the light was so poor, the views more than made up for it though.

Sabine's Gull ~ 1st - S

It vanished later in the week !!