Hmm! That's a nice change!

25/2/06 Welney WWT Leaders:Simeon, James and Connor
Due to time restrictions, the only place to go was Welney. Despite having been there twice in the last three outings, we decided to stick with it to see if we could get anything different from last time! The numbers of Whooper and Bewick's Swans had dropped dramatically. The number of Black-tailed Godwits had risen to 400+. There were also 4 Common Snipe, 9 Bean Geese, 4+ Reed Buntings, 30+ Pintail, 500+ Wigeon, 150+ Pochard and a few Tufted Duck. We were slightly annoyed by the fact that none of this was new to us. As we were walking back to the main observatory, gulls flew over us heading to the roost on one of the islands.
The idea suddenly occured to us to see if we could pick out anything decent amongst them. When we got to the main obs. we immediately set about the horrible task of scanning through about 100 gulls. The annoying thing was, the roost had more than doubled in under 5 minutes!!! There were brilliant numbers of Lesser black-backs, a few Greater black-backs and plenty of Common, Herring and Black headeds. Suddenly, I spotted a strange 1st Winter bird on the edge of the flock. We studied it for a while and with the help of a couple of proffesionals, identified it as a 1st Winter Caspian Gull! It was a lifer for James and I (Simeon)! By the time we left the reserve the number of gulls in the roost was an impressive 400+. It had been a wonderful day and the Caspian Gull had made a nice change!