White-winger, but nothing new

11th February - well its been wet, very muddy and now snow again.  I've been down for a few quick visits in the week, but little has changed.  Today I made a lunchtime visit to see what the snow had brought in.  I was greeted by this nice adult Med Gull.  It's acquiring its summer hood, so is a different bird to an adult winter reported the weekend before last and I think it looks different to the adult bird seen about a month ago too.

The 2 male Shelduck from last week were joined by another male and a female over the weekend and all 4 were still there today.  Pintail numbers had jumped by another single male to 8 birds on Saturday, 6 males and 2 females.  They favour the overhanging the willows on the eastern bank, north of the spit, so are usually hidden from my vantage point on the west bank.  Today, 4 males appeared briefly swimming out from this area, but soon disappeared again and I didn't have time to check how many were actually there.

My 1w LWHG from last week flew in again - is it a Casp, is it YLG?  Well, it certainly looked like a Casp today and I think the darkish area around the eye had put me off unnecessarily.  I saw a lovely white underwing and the scap markings seem fine for Casp, as do the coverts.  Structurally it always looked better for Casp than YLG, so wobble over and Casp it is.  It was distant again though, so only record shots.

Alert posture makes it look quite big, but it's actually a mid-sized bird

The Green Sand flew in again, as it often does and Snipe numbers are still impressively high, with at least 85 visible feeding on the spit today, but otherwise, same old same old.

One other bird of note from last week was a Coal Tit - never an easy bird on this site due to the lack of conifers, but one has been seen a few times coming in from the north to the area around the cottages.  The bird I saw alerted me to its presence as it was in song.  It disappeared off back north.