Storm Darragh

Purple Sandpiper at Farmoor

I braved the winds on Saturday and went out walking on Port Meadow in the hope of some storm-driven seabird. No such luck, but there were quite a lot of gulls lingering over the floods - usually they disperse during the day but I assume they must have been grounded. The individual below caught my eye and I'm still puzzling a bit over its identity. When I initially saw it fly past through bins I assumed it was a Caspian Gull (largely due to the white underwing and general structure), but it has a tail pattern that is much more typical of Yellow-legged Gull (in fact, out of hundreds of Caspian Gulls I don't think I've ever seen one with a tail like this) and very dark wing feathers with reduced inner primary window. To me the face/eye position and head shape are a bit weird as well.

After getting a few opinions it seems that my initial impression was correct and that it's most likely to be a Caspian Gull (presumably a large male). Usually I find that most individuals are fairly easy to assign to either Caspian Gull or Yellow-legged Gull (a much trickier problem is the separation of some Yellow-legged Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls) so always good to come across an instructive bird like this.

Late morning on Sunday after an unsuccessful morning walk I received a message on the WhatsApp group from Ewan Urquhart saying that he had found a Purple Sandpiper at Farmoor. The reservoir has good form with inland Purple Sandpipers, with the concrete slopes apparently being as appealing as the rocky shore to displaced individuals, and this is the 22nd record. I was keen to see this bird as it's been a couple of years since the last one in the county and they are often very confiding. I picked up Ben Sheldon and headed down to the southwest corner of the larger basin, F2, where the bird had been found. It was raining by this point and the light wasn't great, but the bird was very tame and showed down to a couple of metres. It looks like a first-winter, with some retained juvenile coverts.

Ben Sheldon photographing the Purple Sandpiper

Below is a little gallery of the various poses and behaviour that the Purple Sandpiper was displaying. I'm not entirely sure what it was finding to eat, but looking at the photos the morsels don't seem to be very tasty.