Down By the Seaside

If there's one thing I've learnt so far from my gap year, it's that retail work- day-in, day-out- isn't a lot of fun (apart from when you drop a £200 bone-china tea set that you were extracting from a glass cabinet in front of the manager... but even then the fun aspect of it only lasted for a few seconds). Birding, on the other hand, is fun, so I ditched work for the day and headed down to Portsmouth for a day's worth of dirty twitching.

The first port of call was Gosport for the long-staying Ring-billed Gull, a North-American vagrant that has wintered in Walpole Park for the past 7 or 8 years. On arrival, it was still present, and was doing what any well-fed, urbanised Gull would do, nothing. The most exciting thing it did in the hour was break into a slow waddle when a slice of bread was thrown its way...

Moulting into some fine breeding plumage though...

A winter-plumage Mediterranean Gull was a nice bonus...

 

Next stop was the Glossy Ibis, feeding in a field behind a secluded Church off the A27, near Warblington. A very charismatic bird. The Moorhens were fascinated by it.

 

 

It showed quite well, until the Ibis decided to move further south towards the sea wall, giving a nice 30 second fly-by as it did so...

 

Later in the afternoon, news broke of a Red-breasted Goose over on Farlington Marshes. It seemed rude not have pop in on the way home...

 

 

Spot the Black Brant...

 

Dark-bellied Brent Goose dozing...

Dark-bellied Brent Goose reflecting...

 

I took loads more photos of Purple Sandpiper and Mediterranean Gull- too many for one post- so expect a few follow-ups in the next couple of days... try not to get too excited now.