An early start at work to get home to avoid the heat produced the goods when at 6.50am I heard the call of Crossbills and sure enough I quickly picked up 4 birds flying NW just above tree top height. That’s 150 species up for the year.
There I was just about to start some gardening out the front of the house when news filtered through of new bird for Britain. Even better it was less than an hour away so the gardening could wait and off I went. I arrived at Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire (my first ever visit to this site) in around 50 minutes as the roads were kind and wandered off down towards the dam.
Here I bumped into a few familiar faces in John Pegdon, Mike Illet, Darrel Bryant and Brendan Glynn and they kindly got me on the bird stood on the muddy bank in with some Canada Geese. And there it was a sub-adult CAPE GULL. Looking like a miniature albatross with its long thick bill, dark beady eye and long bluey/green legs it certainly looked different to our regular gulls.
I then joined the throng up on the dam rather than the sandy beach below it and here I met Dawn Erskine properly after having walked past her a few times on Scilly last year not knowing it was her, Mark Sutton, Chris Gooddie (of The Jewel Hunter book fame), Steve Richards and George Moreton. Views from here were a bit better as the sun wasn’t in your face. Also present were 2 adult Yellow-legged Gulls and a fly over Yellow Wagtail was heard but not seen.
I wish all twitches could be as close and straight forward as this one was!
