Christine's walking & birds blog

Yesterday on the quayside Mister Grumpy.....


.....eventually presented his profile, so I should be able to work out whether this is a genuine glaucous gull.


Well, his legs seemed thicker than the herring gulls' legs but he didn't appear much larger overall, although it was hard to say when they were all hunched up against the cold; while the eye is certainly small, but is it the true, mean, "go-to-hell" glaucous eye? And is the head flat enough? Questions, questions. Otherwise it's a glaucous/herring gull hybrid, known (I'm not sure why) as a viking gull. Could that have something to do with rape and pillage and a bit of bigotry? - as in "bloody Scandinavians, coming over here seducing our nice herring gulls".

A great black-backed gull on the shore was scavenging from a dead fish. When it flew off I walked down for a closer look, and found the remains of what I think is a fairly large skate.


It was impossible to get close to in the slippery seaweed but I'd say it measured roughly three feet between wing-tips and probably not far off five feet in length.

Earlier at home, I'd been looking out at the bird feeders when a dark shape scythed down over the roof, skimmed the lawn, and swept up into the depths of the cypress tree. A few minutes later it flew to our neighbour's rowan, where many of the birds seek refuge when disturbed from our garden, and almost immediately it came hurtling in pursuit of a smaller bird across our garden and away. I'm fairly sure this was a sparrowhawk.