A quick in and out

I had a half-day today to go twitching. The question was, what to go for? As we head through October there aren't many year-ticks to go for. As a long drive was out of the question I decided on a medium-length trip, down to Dungeness. A Sabines gull had been lingering off the beach for a day or so, and was still there early doors. This is one of the smaller gulls, like a little gull in size and a bit more petite than our black-headed gull. It breeds in the Arctic but is a regular visitor to our shores in Autumn in small numbers. It is a bird I would expect to see most years but you have to and find them. 

 The occasional one does find its way inland: my first in the UK was at Blenheim Palace lake!

So, once I had dropped Judith off at the station I headed down to Kent. There was a bit of traffic but I got to the lighthouse by 12.30. It was very busy there, not with twitchers but Sunday beach visitors and lunchers at the pub! I got a parking space, loaded up my gear and headed off on the short walk to the "patch". Dungeness is one of the first nuclear-power stations in the UK but it is now being decommissioned. Until it finally goes there is a hot-water outlet just off the beach which acts as a magnet for gulls and this is where the gull has been loafing around.

There were a few issues though. First was that there were no other birders around. Second, there were I guess a couple of hundred gulls feeding, flying, sleeping and generally moving about over a couple of hundred yards of sea. Thirdly, by midday you are looking straight into the sun so the light is awful to seen anything! Still, a challenge is a challenge so I set up by the hide and started to scan around. 

After 20 minutes I got onto a "different" gull amongst those feeding on the patch. It seemed a bit smaller and darker, definitely not one of the larger lesser-black backs or herring gulls and with too much colouration to be a black-headed. It was really mobile though and I lost it.

I did notice though that the current across the beach took the birds to my left and as I studied the birds on the sea I saw a smaller, darker one. It was definitely the Sabines gull. You can see in the photo above how much smaller and darker it is compered to the the black-headed gulls. For the next 30 minutes as I watched it with another couple of birders who had arrived it became clear it had pattern.

It flew into the patch, fed for a couple of minutes then settled down to drift along the coast before taking off and repeating the pattern.

It was horrible trying to get a decent shot of it though as the sun was right between me and the bird. The killed shot is of the pattern go black markings on its wings in a characteristic W-shape. As you can see, I failed appallingly! I gave up quite quickly and with nothing else of note around headed back home to avoid the hell of the M25. Still, another year tick so can't complain.