Beddington- winter is here

I have never seen so many gulls over the farm as I have today. I don't know how many thousands: twenty or thirty maybe.

Anyway all we could muster was one adult Mediterranean Gull and six Yellow-legged Gulls.

Lesser black-backs are still in very small numbers, maybe 50 or 60. There were about 10 Great-black backs.

A Buzzard went over putting everything up. It was a blizzard.

A typical 1st winter 'argenteus'. There is some kind of age segregation on the farm with predominately mature groups roosting in one area and immature groups in another.

The small gulls also choose different areas to segregate in to, with Black-headed Gulls generally keeping themselves to themselves.




Maybe a juvenile Lesser black-backed but structurally the bird seems quite heavy. It could be a dark 'northern latitude' herring gull, whose moult is retarded in relation to the earlier breeding and more southern distributed 'argenteus'.