My Evening Off

This evening was likely as not going to be my only free evening all week, usually I have Mondays off too, but this week I'm working it in order to be free on Thursday evening to watch Martha in the Seaton Pantomime Society's production of Beauty and The Beast, she will (rather fittingly) be playing the role of The Beast! Therefore I needed to make the most of it by staying out in the field as long as possible. Unfortunately I had promised Martha a lift to rehearsals at 4 o' clock so couldn't get out to look at the gulls until just after this, and consequently arrived just in the nick of time to miss yet another Iceland Gull, happily though Gav and Phil soon found another at Coronation Corner. I like Iceland Gulls, a lot, and never tire of seeing them, because unlike some birds, you definitely can't say "Seen one you've seen 'em all". I rather hastily counted this bird as my fourth different individual but on looking at Gav's photos of Wednesdays bird I could see they were one and the same. My recall is obviously not up to much, but in its defense I did only have a brief scope view of the bird on Wednesday, and had remembered it as being darker than it was. It's certainly a good job that we can get photos of most birds for later comparison.

Here are a couple of photos of today's Coronation Corner bird:

I liked this one because the 'Shelduck dominated background' makes it stand out nicely.

I put this one on for no reason whatsoever.

The glut of Iceland Gulls appears to have brought in quite a few birders over the weekend, there were three at Coronation Corner this evening and a couple more I noticed further down river. Here's the scene at CC.

A 'large' gathering for a Sunday evening at Cori Corner, although two of these are regulars you may recognise.

As well as the Iceland Gulls there were also plenty of Med Gulls on the estuary, I only saw a handful of them but Gav and Phil counted a record number. The female Common Scoter was still on the river too, for a reason only known to her. As the light faded I took this artistic snap of a (mostly ignored) estuary habitue:

"Red Shanks in the Sunset"

In the last of the twilight I popped over to Musbury and saw three Little Owls on Watery Lane, a year tick no less, "Softly softly catchee monkey"! :-)