Mum didn't go to Iceland after all!

At the end of an afternoon down by the gravel pits I couldn't resist the temptation of going to look for the Icelandic Gull seen the day before on the Dartford Marshes area, and drove off down the M20 with the sun steadily sinking ahead of me! I thought there was a possible second winter Icelandic Gull at the front of the small group - an immature Gull drably brown overall and streaky (a bit too streaky probably), although it was a bit darker on the belly (mud perhaps, it did seem to spend time preening its breast), but clearly there were a lot of other options. In the ground photos, it was not possible to see whether there was a dark wingtip/tail as would be seen in a second winter Herring Gull Larus argentatus, or whether there wasn't, in which case the possibility of a second winter Icelandic, Larus glaucoides, might actually still be on the cards! Eventually the immature gull took off and surprisingly I did manage to get a couple of shots, one of which very surprisingly turned out to have some detail in it! Sadly, however this photo showed that there was a very clear darker training edge to the secondaries, and according to Malling-Olsen and Larsen this makes it a second year Herring Gull.

I was therefore very glad to get this photo - its so nice to have an answer with some degree of confidence, as opposed to a complete "don't know", even if the answer you get is the less exciting of the options! I think I could fairly well exclude junior Lesser Black Backed because of the overall colour pattern,and the bill having a dark tip and paler base, and what appear to be very pink legs. However the photo isn't very clear and a new lens would be an ideal purchase at some stage - a 300 mm is really the entry level lens length for bird photography and I am not really getting close enough to the birds to get good images.