how many Iceland Gulls were there in sussex today????
I say this because we had one at Splash Point. We got excellent views of it and confidently identified it as a second-year bird.
Now, we assumed this was the same bird seen to pass Selsey Bill earlier in the day. It took it about an hour and 10 minutes to travel from Selsey Bill to Splash Point, a reasonable time to be honest.
However, the Selsey bird was apparently a first-summer, via the SOS sightings board. I have no idea how well observers at Selsey saw the bird, so it is possible they may have mis-aged it. I'm not suggesting for a moment they are unreliable, but on the views we had at Splash in flight we could barely identify our gull as an Iceland, let alone age it. It was only once it was down on the rocks we had a chance to ID it as a second-year bird. Of course they may have had much better flight views of their bird at Selsey, in which case there were atleast two Iceland Gulls in sussex today.
And then we get another report. an ADULT ICELAND GULL was seen near Ferring (note that on this link the sighting will have moved down by tomorrow). So now we are left with three Iceland Gulls in sussex in one day! And as far as I'm aware, (SEE HERE), the last showy Ice in the county was also the only one I'd seen prior to today, and that was just over two years ago! Iceland Gulls- just like buses...
I say this because we had one at Splash Point. We got excellent views of it and confidently identified it as a second-year bird.
Now, we assumed this was the same bird seen to pass Selsey Bill earlier in the day. It took it about an hour and 10 minutes to travel from Selsey Bill to Splash Point, a reasonable time to be honest.
However, the Selsey bird was apparently a first-summer, via the SOS sightings board. I have no idea how well observers at Selsey saw the bird, so it is possible they may have mis-aged it. I'm not suggesting for a moment they are unreliable, but on the views we had at Splash in flight we could barely identify our gull as an Iceland, let alone age it. It was only once it was down on the rocks we had a chance to ID it as a second-year bird. Of course they may have had much better flight views of their bird at Selsey, in which case there were atleast two Iceland Gulls in sussex today.
And then we get another report. an ADULT ICELAND GULL was seen near Ferring (note that on this link the sighting will have moved down by tomorrow). So now we are left with three Iceland Gulls in sussex in one day! And as far as I'm aware, (SEE HERE), the last showy Ice in the county was also the only one I'd seen prior to today, and that was just over two years ago! Iceland Gulls- just like buses...
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