Saturday, July 19, 2008 - A Yellow-Legged Gull
After my rather long previous blog entry, here's a brief one about a trip to Farmoor reservoir this afternoon. My VLW (very lovely wife) had decided to go shopping in Reading for the afternoon leaving me once more with our two year old son L. Naturally I felt that he would be best entertained by a trip to Farmoor to catch up with the long staying yellow-legged gulls that were around. Not only did I need YLG for my year list, it was one of the birds that I couldn't remember whether I'd seen on my boy hood life list. In fact back then in the dark ages it was probably just a sub-species and so wouldn't have counted as a tick in its own right anyway.
I arrived after lunch only to be reminded that going to Farmoor on a weekend afternoon in the summer is generally a bad idea: there are loads of wind surfers, sailors and fishermen around and the birds tend to be thin on the ground. I did my usual walk up the causeway but encountered precious little. There were a few common terns and black-headed gulls nesting on the tern rafts and a lone redshank was being rather indecisive - not knowing which bank to stand on and flying constantly between one and the other. Given that there was a strong westerly wind a lot of the birds were tucked up at this end, sheltering in the lee of the high reservoir sides. There were loads of coots and plenty of tufted ducks and great crested grebes. There were also quite a few mongrel geese which were presumably the same birds that are usually in the field the other side of the Thames. A kingfisher flew past and seemed to duck into one of the pump station outlets - perhaps it was nesting there. Given that the reservoir had concrete sides it wouldn't have been able to make a burrow of its own. There had been no sign of any YLG or even any type of gull apart from BHG's. Blaming it on the weekend leisure activity I contemplated a trip over to nearby Dix pit, which I reasoned was probably where they were if they weren't here. In the end I decided that I'd leave that for another day and would instead have a look in at Shrike Meadow and Pinkhill.
Shrike Meadow held nothing more than a grey heron and a few sleeping tufted ducks. The walk down to Pinkhill proved more interesting: there are often lots of warblers in the hedges nearby. Some interesting finches were also flying over with a call that I didn't recognise. Now I'm still very much learning my finch calls: I've got gold, green, chaff, sisken and linnet sussed but still need to learn lesser redpoll and I was wondering whether these were unseasonal redpolls. I got out my mobile phone on which my Bird Guides bird calls are loaded and scrolled down to redpoll. Just at this moment however I spotted something moving in the hedges. It looked like a rather large yellowish willow warbler/chiffchaff. Unfortunately it wasn't around for long enough for me to have a good look and it was highly unlikely that it was actually anything as exotic as an Ickterine or Melodious warbler. Shortly after I heard a "hoo-eet" contact call which meant that it was just a willow-chaff. However by this time I'd forgotten the details of the finch call that I'd heard so I had to be content with familiarising myself with the redpoll trill for future reference.
Pinkhill itself held very little apart from a common tern at close range sitting on a post and a birder trying to photograph it. He turned out to be someone I'd met previously: he recognised me as the person dragging two members of my family around at Otmoor. We got chatting and I mentioned that I'd been after the YLG and he said that he'd seen it over the far side of Farmoor I about half an hour previously. Encouraged by this I soon left and went back to the reservoir. I set up the scope and scanned the far side of Farmoor I, almost immediately picking up on a large gull which even from that range clearly had yellow legs and was the bird I was after. I decided to walk around the far side of the reservoir to take a closer look and to see if I could get a digiscoped photo. I got pretty close and was just setting up when the bird took exception to this attention and flew off to the other side again. I had to content myself with walking around the rest of the far side seeing what was about. There were a couple of immature grey wagtails, two common sandpipers and a dunlin braving the increasingly strong wind. I did manage a digiscoped shot of the dunlin which was typically confiding.
 The Farmoor Dunlin
So the afternoon had turned out better than expected and I got my target gull. That makes another year tick and another technical lifer.
187: yellow-legged gull (LIFER technically)
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About Me
I used to be a birder in my youth but rather lost interest in my teens as other things became more interesting. However recently I've rediscovered this interest and would like to share my sightings and thoughts in this blog.
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