Midwinter Little Gull

Adult Little Gull, Port Meadow

It has been pretty misty and damp for the last couple of days and I've been complaining about the general effect that this has had on birding Port Meadow. It is very difficult to see through the murk with the floods being so large and viewing has been limited to walking the Thames path and hoping to pick out birds loafing close on the riverbank. I had a session at the roost on Thursday evening with Adam and Steve Lavington (visiting from Hampshire) and whilst three Caspian Gulls were present the visibility was so terrible that it was a pretty unsatisfying experience.

Upon opening my curtains on Friday morning and seeing yet another dismal grey and misty view I had basically decided to not bother going out on the patch at all. However as always seems to happen, by midday I was getting slightly antsy about what could be out there and so decided to head out for a quick lunchtime walk.

I locked up my bike by Walton Well car park and began walking towards the flood. I had barely got past the gate when I had a subliminal view of something fluttering over the flood before dipping behind a bund. I knew this had to be a Little Gull and getting bins on the area I had another brief view as it rose up again, clearly feeding over the southern end of the flood - and saw that it was an adult in winter plumage. Seeing how close it was I began running to try and get some pics and was relieved to find it was still there, albeit slightly more distant when I reached the edge of the flood. These first photos are indicative of the initial views - slightly surreal to see it dip feeding in front of an oblivious dog walker throwing sticks into the flood!

I called Adam to let him know that the bird was present and over the next hour or so it stayed very faithful to the southern edge of the flood, fluttering up and down flycatching and offering the most insane views, down to just 3m at times. I feel that this video, taken on my mobile phone, perhaps best conveys just how ridiculously confiding the bird was - I even managed to get a photo of Adam watching the bird with it in the background!

Some of the assembled locals didn't even bother with bins!

Below is a selection of my favourite shots - please click the photos to view at full resolution. It was a real challenge to sort through the 2000 or so images that I took, as the bird showed so well that I managed to capture every conceivable pose, behaviour and background. Unlike my old camera, almost all of the images were basically in focus, so it's not like I could just automatically bin 75% of them due to being soft! The biggest problem with lots of them was the fact that the bird was actually too close, so bits of the bird's reflection were cut off. Even in the gloom, I still mostly managed to keep the ISO below 2000,  shooting at F5.6 with 1/2000 shutter speed, so they didn't need much denoising.

The bird was still present this morning, although I only saw it briefly - to be honest, I'm quite glad that was the case as the light was much better and I would have ended up filling another SD card with photos!