26th Nov 2017

After the Kittiwake on Tuesday, things were pretty much back to normal. On Wednesday morning John had two Yellow-legged Gulls at the reservoir. Thursday lunchtime, John had a male Stonechat along the fence in the cattle field. It is likely to be the same bird that has been sporadically over the last few weeks, but it has stayed mostly out of sight at a safe distance from the reservoir edge.

Today I had a good walk around in search of something of interest. There was a Willow Tit in the wood, it was very vocal and I did have brief but good views. Otherwise, there were only Yellow-legged Gulls of any interest.

To start I saw a 2CY at the reservoir, terrorising all of the other gulls chasing them around or completely away. That was until the sailing boats chased all of the gulls away. Up the valley on the Borrow Pit pool there was around 100 large gulls, including what was likely the same bird I had just seen and a near adult bird. I got onto a bird that could have been a juv Caspian Gull, but all the birds flushed. Over the valley I could see hundreds of gulls, loafing in the field with the mound (just into Northants) and flocks of birds over the fields in Chacombe. There must have close to, if not over, a thousand birds in the area. Waiting around at the Borrow Pit I had good views of at least another adult Yellow-legged Gull but not a lot else. Of note, there have been Caspian Gulls seen recently at Boddington Reservoir and John saw 5-6 Yellow-legged Gulls there in today's roost. So there is a god chance we will get Caspian Gulls in this area again this winter.