1st November - Blacka Moor, Longshaw, and Redmires with Kev. Rare Magpie! And a Caspian Gull

Had a days birding a few weeks back on the western fringe of Sheffield with Kev. Misty, overcast, and cool. We started at Blacka Moor . When you have a patch, common birds that might otherwise not generate much interest often take on significance.  Fieldfare were moving over in higher numbers then I had recorded before, Starlings  ( a scarce bird here in summer) dispersing from there urban roosts to pastures in the Peak District. However I really was stretching Kev’s credulity with a sighting of a Magpie; honestly they are rare here in winter!

Next we headed over to the neighbouring Nation Trust Longshaw Estate. The feeders there, diligently maintained by Kim Schofield, are often very well stocked with birds. Last winter I spent 3 days studying Mealy and Lesser Redpolls there along with a male Sparrowhawk taking both a Coal Tit and a Goldfinch off the feeders at close range and with only half an hour between them.  Numbers on common passerines appeared to have yet to have built up but we did see a Waxwing drop in and briefly fly-catch from the top of a Beech.

Our final call was at Redmires Reservoirs.  Not a great deal of wildfowl were present but included a red-head Goldeneye and a Greylag Goose, the latter still an uncommon bird on the moorland reservoirs. Moving to the hide by the middle reservoir we met a couple of birders. I mentioned to them that Yellow-legged Gulls were regular here at the moment and set about trying to find them one amongst the loafing Lesser Black-backs. Kev had his scope set up focused on the gulls and on looking through it I thought we‘d dropped straight on one. However a quick check of salient features and I soon realised that I was looking at something decidedly reminiscent of a Caspian Gull.



Caspian Gull (an archive picture, not the actual gull!)

  The bird appeared to be a third winter in a quite advanced state of moult; very little immature feathering was present in the upper-wing coverts and the tail appeared all white. Most distinctive was the dull coloured slim-based bill separated by a thin blackish band from the yellow, gently curving tip to the upper mandible. The eye was dark, legs dull pinkish, head largely unstreaked but there was a well marked ‘boa’ of greyish spots on the neck side. The upper parts appeared darker then a few nearby Herring Gulls (didn’t fully grill them to subspecies unfortunately) with longer wings (both on the ‘deck’ and in flight). Also on one occasion when the bird was on the water it stretched its neck up which looked rather long. The underwings were only seen briefly but appeared rather white with a somewhat darker shadow on the underside on the flight feathers. The only feature that I wasn’t totally sure about was the pattern of the closed primary tips. Only the inner visible 2 were tipped pale, the innermost distinctly, the next out diffusely (presumably primaries 6 and 7, ‘P6 & P7’). There was a mirror on the underside of the longest primary. The pattern on the upper wing did not match that illustrated in Collin’s. I’d not previously seen a Caspian Gull of this age so I needed to do some research at home. The best explanation I could find for the primary pattern was new inner primaries (hence the obvious pale tips) and older outer primaries. A pale mirror on a second year outermost primary (P10) is apparently a pro-Caspian feature.
Sheffield is pretty much at the northern most limit of Caspian Gulls regular occurrence in Britain and is a ‘description species’. Hopefully we got enough on it to get a record through but that’ll be down to the Sheffield Bird Study and Yorkshire Naturalists Trust records committees!