There had been rain overnight that persisted during the morning and with
a fresh and gusting wind I had decided not to go out until after lunch. David suggested that we go to Shawell as adult
Iceland Gull had been seen regularly in the Draycote Water roost and it was
possibly spending the day at Shawell tip.
We set off around 14:00 seeing a Kestrel near the turn to Kilby and arrived
at Shawell around 14:35. After passing
through the village David stopped to view a field where he had seen gulls in
the past and the good news was that there were several hundred present. We could see that the fast majority were
Lesser Black-backed Gulls but as we scoped the flock we found a good number of
both Black-headed and European Herring Gulls.
David then indicated that he had a white-winged gull but on moving he
was unable to find it and went back to his original position. He soon located it again and provided some
directions and I there was a rather nice first-winter Iceland Gull, which
wasn’t what we expected but was the target species.
The Iceland Gull performed quite well for quite some time, but we were
unable to locate anything else of note and eventually moved further down the
road to view the sandpit area. There
were even more gulls here again mainly Lesser Black-backed Gulls but also good
numbers of Black-headed and European Herring Gulls. As we scanned through the gulls we found
smaller numbers of both Common and Great Black-backed Gulls and David then
picked up the Iceland Gull again and just afterwards he thought he had a
first-winter Caspian Gull, but the gulls took to flight before I found it and
many flew off to the south. We continued
scanning the gulls that had remained and I found an adult Yellow-legged Gull,
but we eventually called it a day and headed off.
As we were leaving I saw a bird perched on one of the building I thought it
might be a Peregrine Falcon and so we turned and went back for a better
view. There was a Common Buzzard in a
hedge as we went back to look at the bird on the building. As we approached the building the bird was
still there, and we were able to confirm my suspicions that it was a Peregrine
Falcon.
We had another Common Buzzard near the Kilby turn as we approached
Wigston but saw little else on the journey home.
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