Since we got back from the Scottish camping trip, I've been aware (via birdguides website) that theres been a Ross's gull at Lytham.
Now Ross's gull is a very rare sighting in the UK indeed, and it had travelled from the far north of Canada or Arctic siberia to be here.
However, Lytham is 25 miles from my home, and being the environmentally ethical birder, I didnt want to travel 50 miles for a twitch.
Anyway, we now deliver (chainsaw parts) to the Preston and Lytham area on Thursdays. All I had to do was hope that the gull didnt do a runner before I could get to it.
I turned up at fairhaven lake today about midday to this collection of twitchers at the sea wall. Phewww! It was still there.
It had been quite flighty and had been leading the twitchers on a wild goose (or should that be gull) chase for the previous few days. Unfortunately, when I arrived it had just settled down for a kip....with the sun in the wrong side for photos!!
So not the greatest photos, but a fine twitch nonetheless.
Waders in the bay today were - knot(1000's), grey plover (new for year) , redshank, dunlin, and whimbrel.
Here is one of the whimbrel looking down its nose at me!
PS
I also scored a single Tree sparrow whilst delivering near Preston today.
The Ross's goose (discovered and named by the same guy) is also still in Lancashire.....I'll just have to find a way to justify the carbon footprint for that twitch ;)
3 comments:
Hi Mitch
Amazingly the gull and goose are named after two different guys called Ross. The gull after British polar explorer Rear-Admiral Sir James Clark Ross and the goose after Irishman Bernard Rogan Ross - an administrator in the Hudson Bay Company. I only looked this up the other day and it was a surprise to me too. Keep up the splendid work! See you around soon.
Mike
Hi Mitch
Here's a formatting tip. I used to spend hours fannying around on my blog wondering why I could never get gaps between my paragraphs and photos until Pete told me to put in a 'hard return' at the end of a paragraph or after a photo.
Press shift (i.e. the upper case button) and return at the same time at the end of a para or after a photo and your gaps between photos and paragraphs should be preserved when you publish the entry.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Thanks Mike for the Ross's correction and the formatting tip.
My biggest problem with the blog is with fonts. If I make the headline big, the rest of the post seems to randomly change size. Perhaps this "hard return" might fix this.....
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