Category: gulls
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January-February 2025
A belated roundup of the late winter period, during which pursuit of Water Pipit became a bit of a preoccupation. Combe Valley CP is a known wintering site for the species but they are typically elusive and I struggle to get a handle on numbers. Inspired by a recent British Birds article, I wondered if…
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November-December 2024
November and December can mean only one thing: gulls, and particularly the passage of large gulls which seems to occur in Sussex at this time of year. My impression is that that years passage was more protracted, with numbers never quite reaching the heights of the great westward movements of late December last year. There…
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September 2024
September is when visible migration really steps up a gear and my birding time over the month was largely spent soaking it up. It was a wet and unsettled month weather wise and this may have contributed to those those days of finer weather being particularly lively. Movement seems to occur on a broad front…
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August 2024
The first half of August was warm and relatively calm, with some great days for observing migration. In the third week of the month the remains of Hurricane Ernesto passed over the UK, bringing with it strong winds and rain which largely put a hold on movement. This was followed by a final period of…
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July 2024
The long, warm days of July can mean only one thing: it’s time to start looking for that keenly awaited marker of midsummer; the arrival of juvenile Yellow-legged Gull from southern Europe. My first this year came on the 13th, with a flyby watched moving west from West Hill. In marked contrast to the riches…
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June 2024
It’s difficult to summarise the wildly variable weather experienced here during June but it certainly felt unseasonably cool for much of it. On the 1st of the month I spent the day at Rye Harbour NR (RHNR), a safe bet for interesting birding at the time of year with the last bits of wader passage…
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Gull vismig, Hastings, December 2023
I spent much of my December birding time watching gulls as they drifted along the cliffs in Hastings. There seems to have been a near constant stream moving west here and the process of scouring them for rare species is quite addictive. The first clue that something was happening came in the first week of…
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Sabine’s Gull and Grey Phalarope, Norman’s Bay, 11 November 2023
On the 11th I made the short trip west to Norman’s Bay to catch up with the 1CY Sabine’s Gull which had been hanging around there since the 5th Nov. In the end this came with the very nice bonus of a Grey Phalarope and at least 7 Little Gull. These storm blown birds have…
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September 2023 birding roundup
A busy month with a bit of time away meant less time for birding, but nonetheless there was some great variety and highlights in the best birding month of the year. Particularly exciting has been the increase in visible migration (aka vismig) of many diurnal migrant species, most notably House Martin, Meadow Pipit and Siskin.…
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More Juvenile Yellow-legged Gulls at Hastings Seafront, July 2023
After the influx of Yellow-legged Gull (YLG) on the 11th July there was a steady trickle of juveniles through the seafront over the rest of the month, with birds present on all four of my subsequent visits. My guess is that the birds on the 11th had taken advantage of the southerly airflow to make…