Leybourne Lakes

Barden Lake on a muddy drizzly day

Four drake Pochard, and a juvenile Herring Gull today

Pleurotus by Lady Baggot's Drive

Just that I'm afraid. I kept on trying to make it Pleurotus cornucopiae, but I think it was probably just Pleurotus ostreatus.

Found on a trunk lying horizontally near the edge of the woods next to the field margin, above Lady Baggot's Drive near Bontuchel. 

Dunlin feast at Cliffe pools

A few thousand Dunlin roosting at high tide, several hundred Black-tailed Godwit, fifty or so Grey Plover, maybe a dozen Redshank, one or two Avocet, about a hundred Shelduck, nearly a hundred Tufted Duck, a score or two of Teal, half a dozen Goldeneye, Clangula bucephela, a few Gadwall, at least two Little Egret, dozens of Black-Headed Gulls, about a dozen Herring Gulls with two Lesser Black-Backed gulls out on the Thames, three or more flyover Cormorants.

Three Pipits by the Sea Wall.

A great day, I got quite chilled by Flamingo Pool and on on the sea wall

Sunny Whetsted

Treecreeper, blue tit, great tit, reed bunting, chaffinch, robin, a possible snipe, tufted duck (one female with white spot on face) mallard, black-headed gull, common gull, Larus canus, lesser black-backed gull, possibly graellsii, swans, coots, cormorant (one in breeding plumage), great crested grebe, little grebe.

On the way back there were two robins singing from the tops of the poplars by the side of the apple orchard leading to Kelchers Lane. Here is one of them:

Wing patterns of Black-headed Gulls

This Black-headed Gull, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, clearly shows the white triangle on the far wing. This is supposed to only cover four feathers. However - it does look as though the outer web of P6 (as well as P7) is actually white rather than grey. Most books talk about the white triangle only extending over P10-7, the four feathers stated above. Note however the wide spread of the wing - normally the grey portion of these webs might be hidden? 

This bird also looks as if P6 is at least half white. It doesn't look too rare to me?

Here again the outer half of P6 looks white to me, at least on the right hand wing. And I still haven't understood how the underside of the wing can differ from the upperside:

This bird on the other hand appears to be entirely white on P10-P7, and nothing after that!

Birthday bash at Barden

I managed to get a few more pictures at Barden today, and I was a bit luckier with flying birds. Here is an adult that doesn't seem to have started its head moult at all yet.  The wings are quite blurry - I'm not sure if this is due to a shallow depth of focus, or to the speed of the wing movement:

Here is another, still at roughly the same stage of moult. The bill is also still quite orangey, or at most a medium red, rather than the breeding dark red. There could just be a black line along the outside top of P8, and see the picture a further two down for possible confirmation.

Moving on to another bird now, this one partly through the head moult

This is another bird, at about the same stage of the head moult, but one of the best candidates for a second winter bird that I have seen, with really clear black lines along parts of the edges of P7, P8, P9 and P10:

And here is a first winter bird for comparison - note the almost complete black lines along the edges of the outer primaries, together with the typical patches of brown and sooty black along the coverts. Note the very yellow orangey bill:

This first winter bird below (different to the one above) is showing two white tail feathers, T1 and T2. This can occur, according to Olsen, as an early part of the spring moult to summer plumage, although in this case this would be an early example, and apparently prior to any head moult in this particular individual. Morg of Morgithology mentions seeing something like this in 2010, but was also unsure of a definitive explanation. These particular white feathers look as though they are projecting out further than their dark-tipped neighbours.