Gull Invasion

Two days ago saw a really photogenic early morning sky for just a few minutes. As the sun was rising the light was changing by the second but I managed to get a couple of photos that captured, pretty much, the clouds and the light as I saw them.

Whilst I was leaning out of the bedroom window watching the light  I counted over fifty Fieldfare moving west. Pheasant numbers in the field had moved up to seven and Magpies and Carrion Crows were feeding on scraps which had been thrown out the day before.

But what made today a little more unusual was the flock of gulls that pitched into the field outside the house. During the twenty years of living here I could count the number of times gulls have used this field to loaf in on one hand. Early morning tends to see movement of Lesser Black-backs, Herring and Black-headed Gulls heading out to feed in the surrounding arable fields and there is always good movement in the evenings as birds move back towards roosting sites on the gravel extraction lakes along the Trent valley. I think most of the birds that I see use the Hoveringham complex and over the past few years this has turned up good numbers of white-winged gulls as well as Yellow-legged and the odd Caspian and Mediterranean Gull. Today there were 75 Black-headed Gulls and 7 Common Gulls just outside my front door!

Occasionally some of the birds displayed an interest in the same rubbish that earlier had been of interest to the corvids. I presume that these birds were just resting awhile whilst moving from one feeding area to another.