A quiet Sunday morning

I got up quite late, for me, on Sunday morning. After a quick read of the Sunday Times and some breakfast I was working out whether it was going to be too hot to do gardening or whether I should bite the bullet and clear-up around the house! I had a quick check on my phone, more out of curiosity than in the expectation of anything interesting. The only thing on the Casual twitchers WhatsApp was a Cape gull at Grafham water. For a minute I thought this was just one of those "interesting" sub-species of lesser black-backed gull or the like. Then I noticed the three-part binomial - Larus dominicanus vetula. Larus - so its a gull, but "dominicanus", that was one I didn't recognise. L.fuscus is LBBG so it wasn't one of them. The WhatsApp chat was clearly pointing to a real mega and I quickly worked out that this was a sub-species/ race of Kelp gull and if so was a first for the UK!!!!! Others were already in their cars and heading to the reservoir. Fortunately all my gear was in the hall and the car was full enough with petrol. I grabbed a water bottle, explained my sudden change of plan to Judith and was on the road within 15 minutes of the alert coming in. 

Fortunately Grafham water is only an hours drive north of me and the traffic wasn't too bad. Just after 11.30 I pulled into a very busy car-park and found a space. Mostly it was families and holiday makers, who looked a bit surprised at all my photo gear and telescope being yomped across the car park towards the dam. There were I guess 50 or so birders by the dam wall looking out.

I asked the first people I met "is it showing?". Oh yes it was, loafing on the mud no more than 50 metres away!!!

There were very few other gulls around and this was a real brute of a bird!

The bird had been identified as a Cape gull, which is a sub-species of kelp gull.  They normally inhabit the west coast of Africa from southern Sahara down through Mauretania and the Gambia and South Africa. It has been put forward as a species which should eventually get here but so far there had been no records, until today. With it being so obviously chilled out I relaxed a bit, met up with a couple of others birders I knew including Brook Perrins, and started to study this strange beast. 

I suspect like many there I would not be able to identify it if I saw it without prior knowledge. It did stand out as very different though, with its grey-green, long, rangy legs and a really strong bill.

Others more knowledgable than myself put it down as a 3rd or 4th calendar year bird. Interestingly it was in the company of number of yellow-legged gulls. These are common on southern Europe and may very well have acted as a carrier for the Cape gull as they dispersed north after breeding.

You could get a good comparison of the mantle colour when they stood near to each other. It was very noticeable that the Cape gull had legs very widely spaced apart!

Whilst I was there, from 12 to 2, it was very hot and the crowd was building steadily till it was at least 300 strong. 

The gull showed no sign of moving away from its patch on the beach though. The closest it got to movement was occasionally having a stroll into the water for a drink and a quick preen.

When it finally came ashore and sat down I thought it was time to head back home. Would have been nice to see it fly but it was now really hot and my water bottle was empty. My prime space on the wall was quickly snapped up by others arriving with broad smiles on their faces. 

It was estimated that over 1000 people connected on Sunday. The bird is still there today (Monday) and it sounds like there's another large crowd, with some going for seconds already. My 10th lifer for the UK this year and a very welcome one as it was so close to home.