Upton warren- Return of the Med

21/08/10

(and a little bit of british america too, wink wink :-D)

The times were getting desperate now after missing every Med gull at the warren in the roosts, despite putting 3-4 hours in every saturday, but when news filtered through that terry hinnet had found a med at the early stages of the roost an hour or so before our arrival, things were set to look good.
walking down to the hide, terry and dave were just leaving and said the med was still down, they said abouts where it was and i was in the tower hide in a flash grilling the gulls that had already assembled, after 15 mins of scaning through the gulls it became blatently obvious that it was not there, as i prepared for the ultimate dip.
Only at this point did i first scan everywhere else, and in the goose flock at the back of the flashes was this:


A Ross's Goose :-D
i just started laughing at the sight of it, it did a long stint feeding here, then on the 3rd flash then flew out west at 7:23pm
Other notes:
2 Gadwall
2 Shoveler
57 Teal
2 LRP
6 Green Sand
2 Common Sand
1 Snipe

About an hour later i picked up a dark gull inamongst the BHG on the water between the 1st and 2nd flash, a quick scope job and there it was a Juv- 1st winter MEDITERRANEAN GULL, my 3rd upton med this year, i just cant get enough of them
(pics taken after the bird moved muchhhhhhh closer)







So with the ultimate task set, i decided to head into the world of female/juv and eclipse male teal's looking for a 'fem' type Garganey.
well this kinda failed untill only 10-15 mins before we were heading off i picked up the bird dabbling on the south shore with 2 common teal, making my hit rate with garganeys at UW this year 100%. whoop, whoop, the bird then swam towards us and came close enough to ID it a a juv and not a female as first thought.
a very nice evening with me picking out every 'good' bird, you cant say you go in a hide and want to be the person asking for directions, you want to find the birds and have the privelidge of calling it '(insert random good bird name here) over here' or occasionally something with more explicit language for the rarer types. it also boosts your confidence IDing a bird right, i was starting to dout my own abilities to ID a med gull.
not a bad evening with
1 Ross's goose ( not countable but bloody hillerious)
1 Garganey (juv)
1 juv-1st winter MED Gull
MB