Saturday, September 18, 2021
I drove to Morefield and set off, down the long steep flight of steps with the dodgy handrail, across the football field, through the gap in the trees, along the path past the pond and the bungalow, around the curving edge of the river as far as the skeletonized boat - and realised I'd left my binoculars in the car! A quick mental discussion of whether I could do without them, and coming to the conclusion that as I'd be searching for a very small gull I couldn't, back I went to the car to get them.
Some hot-and-bothered minutes later, edging round the green nearest to the spit and avoiding several golfers, I crunched across the shingle to the rose bush and scanned the area exposed by the low tide. The birds were a fair distance away so I risked walking out from behind the bush and sitting on the ground in the open. Fourteen or fifteen redshanks were making nice music as they flew about restlessly and then settled on the spit - but I couldn't see the Sabine's. Glancing for the second time at some gulls bathing in the river, I realised it was there. How did it do that? Where had it been? I recall writing something like this about the juvenile Sabine's gull last year, and wondered if this was actually the same individual. It certainly seems to feel at home here.
Realising that having been still for ages, I was now quite cold, I left. Soon be time for thermal underwear!
