London's first bona fide Bonaparte's Gull

As always, I struggled to get up this morning but was on the patch at Crossness just before 7am.Overcast with not much doing on the Thames, but I enjoyed all the showy Whitethroats. It really was quiet in Barking Bay and off the golf centre with nada in the way of waders. So I walked east, heading for the paddocks to check for passers and any smalls on the flood. But I never got there...

I plonked my scope down by the incinerator outfall, hoping that yesterday's Med Gull might still be around. Scanning the gulls along the foreshore, I tracked onto something that immediately made woke me up, gave me a real rush of adrenaline. For bloody ever, John A, Ian M and I have always been saying that this will be where London's first Bonaparte's gets found. And, f**k me right there was a proper candidate. It needed to fly (to nail the underwing), come a bit closer but it was going to be one for sure. And with every second counting and John A unable to get out (but he did on my call!), the big dick London players were tipped off to be on their way. I also gave Hawky a call on the north side, and just as all this commotion was going on, the bad boy obliged and came closer - and it was, as expected, a properly nice 1st-summer Bonaparte's Gull. London's first bona fide Bonaparte's - RBA and Jerry were duly called, so time to get the party started.

The bird flew west after a short while, and Hawky did a proper bit of squinting and expertly picked it up on our side of the river from his side. This was as John A arrived, so the three of us had seen it now. But, just before Crossness's longest stalwart Ian M arrived it did the dirty and headed upriver. Good to see a few guys turn up pretty quickly - Bob W, James L, James H, Johnny A, Mick S - but it was Keith H who relocated it west of the lighthouse on the far side of the Thames. So it was now time for Hawky and Shaun H to get the shots, while London's number 1 Andrew M, Roy B, Andrew S and Andrew V had to make do with distant views from our side. I left when a certain annoyingly vocal crowd member arrived, drowning out even the raucous local Starlings.

There is one accepted London record of Bonaparte's Gull as it stands - a first-winter seen at Barn Elms on 29th Jan 1983. This record is in need of reappraisal as the single observer has supplied Surrey and southwest London's birders with a lot of reports of good birds that they have not seen. So everyone (apart from one man) is treating this bad boy as London's first...

A bit of Icelandic colour

Back to the local stuff today, and things were on the move. Well, sort of. It hardly felt spring like temperature wise, but a few Whitethroats were back in and Swallows were heading steadily west in dribs and drabs. Little else though in the cold.

15 out of the 368 Iceland Black-tailed Godwits today

But the highlight of the day was an influx of migratory Icelandic Black-tailed Godwits at Crossness - 368 of them in total. There's a wintering flock at this site, but the sight of 6 colour-ringed individuals, suggested that a fair few of these were new birds heading north as I'd not had any of these birds previously. Using these excellent links - here and here - I managed to figure out a couple were ringed in Iceland, one orange-flagged bird in France and the others are presumably from the UK.

Two of today's colour-ringed Blackwits - Peter Potts responded quickly, and the bird on the right was ringed on the Axe Estuary, Seaton, Devon on 5th March 2011 and then seen at Cliffe, Kent, on 29th October 2011 before my sighting today.

I also had a couple of Yellow-legged Gulls, one at Crossness and a couple in flooded fields at Crayford. Also, on the barges outside my flat at Rotherhithe, was a North Thames Gull Group ringed Herring Gull.

Cracking cach in the snow

So this year's helping of snow comes to South London and, well, I can say that they'd learnt from their mistakes. It was with remarkable ease that I got to Crossness this morning, taking little over my usual time. So well done to Southwark, Lewisham and Greenwich for doing a good job and keeping the roads going.

And a good job I got to Crossness as I located an absolutely cracking 1st-winter Caspian Gull off the golf centre early afternoon - the first 1st-winter I'd seen here for ages, and easily the best age in terms of looks for this cracking species gull. Just have a look at these shots and tell me that Casps aren't totally beautiful: -

As obvious as Casps get!

A Caspian torpedo... nice dark centred tertials lacking any notching

Scaps here show nice anchors and transverse barring, as you'd expect

Noticeably white-headed with a long, parallel-sided bill lacking much in the way of an obvious gonys

Matchstick legs

Black primaries and secondaries contrastingly nicely with the chocolate brown upperwing coverts; also nice pale tips to the greater coverts. A whitish rump contrasting with the black tail band

Not the cleanest Casp in terms of its underwing... but palish central area

Normally a bit of the white stuff causes a bit of movement, and for sure that happened today. There weren't any wild geese or swans, but 11 Golden Plover over by the outfall mid-morning were the first I'd seen at Crossness, and for John A too, the first truly on the patch (as birds at Rainham can sometimes be seen from the Belvedere end of the Thames Path). I managed to miss 5 Goldeneye off the golf centre just before I arrived, but several Grey Plovers (at least 7) were mincing about and the Bar-tailed Godwit was still on the foreshore. A few Meadow Pipits and a Skylark moving overhead, and a load of Snipe frozen out and on the foreshore.

Common Snipe on the foreshore

Classic Casp at Crossness

Another blustery day, and after the usual mooch around Rotherhithe and a quick check of Greenwich Creek, arrived at Crossness shortly after 9am. John A had located a pretty decent Casp candidate that had drifted downriver and, a short while later, I located presumably the same bird just gliding nice and relaxed over the outfall. The views were dire to start, but even head on the gauky big bill and small eye combined with a dock off white P10 tip suggested this would be the real deal. And it was, with no bling compared to yesterday, and a new individual for the year (close to the bird on 1st-2nd Jan in appearance): -

What you'd expect on the deck... both structurally and also the large amount of white in the primaries

Note the rather narrow, slightly broken band to P5

That's what a pale tongue to P10 looks like! Check out the right wing.

This adult lingered for an hour or so this morning, drifting between the outfall and round the bend to the west beyond the lighthouse. There was also a 2nd-winter Yellow-legged Gull around but with the tide high, I headed off to Thamesmere. Despite people looking during the week with a blank, I refound the female Ferruginous Duck in the reeds and alerted John, Ian and Steve. It was elusive and, still not feeling great, didn't want to be messed around by a grubby duck so didn't linger too long. From what I saw, it had more of a subterminal band near the bill base than I remembered/noted last Sunday. However, John later suggested to me that it wasn't too pronounced and that a wing stretch - revealing an extensive wing bar almost the length of the wing - was decent enough.

I had a bit of chilling out at Canada Water when I got back to Rotherhithe, enjoying this punk: -

Then I headed back home and on the Thames late a'noon, managed to find a couple of 2nd-winter Yellow-legged Gulls in amongst the large gulls that often congregate here on Sundays due to the lack of tipping. Note the lack of a mirror to P10 in both birds,  with bird 1 a lot more retarded in moult, iris colour and bare parts than bird 2: -

Bird 1

Bird 2

Bird 2 on the deck

Immigrants from the NW and Poland

Nope, this isn't a Daily Mail style rant about London's growing population. After checking the river by our flat and then the lake at Burgess Park early doors with again no Med Gull, I headed to school for a few hours and the gulling had to be interrupted. While I was ramming the usefulness of different flood defence methods down my GCSE students' necks for their exam early next week, Kev J and Mick S had pulled a winger out of the bag at Crayford. A nice 2nd-winter Iceland Gull and, believe it or not, the first I'd seen this winter.

A couple of my shots showed a fairly obvious tail band but this really wasn't the case in the flesh, and highlights the danger of going off single images for some identifications. For some reason, this year's influx/wreck seem to have a disproportionate amount of this age.

So, having been able to enjoy a gull without a little bit of head scratching, it was back to Cross Ness where this bird was straight out from where I parked my car and on the Thames foreshore. What was immediately apparent was that it looked like a Caspian Gull and, a first for me, it was wearing a bit of bling.

Note the green ring with white writing on the right tarsus

Dobry wieczor!

Pretty confident that the green ring this bird was wearing meant that it'd be from Poland (yeah, home to mixed colonies of cachinnans, michahellis and argentatus!), I vaguely recalled that Dom had a ringed Casp from that neck of the woods a short while back at Rainham. So I texted him whilst Kev J, Mick S and I watched this eastern block of a bird. I was struggling with the wind to read the ring, as well as the bird being on the tideline being meaning its feet were in the water. But I managed to get '3P' as the last couple of digits before Dom's text arrived saying '355P'. Bang... nice stuff and it is the same bird that was superbly photographed by Dom here (note the totally different stance/jizz as today the bird was facing into a fierce blow) and Mick S will have much better shots at some point here from today. Aged as a near adult due to the fact that it had retained dark markings on the primary-coverts, these match up too with those on Dom's images.

Nice pale outer web to P10 with large white subterminal mirrors to both P9 and P10; also note the retained feathering on the primary coverts ageing it as a near adult/4th winter

Typically long-winged feel to the bird with a small beady eye even obvious in this flight shot

The bird was ringed in 2008, apparently in a mixed colony and unidentified at the time(!) like all pullus ringed in such situations - so this just shows the events we're dealing with when it comes to birds over here. By probability, you've got to assume that a lot of our Caspian-type birds are from the west/northwest of the range and the gene pool is rather diluted. Makes a change though for field birders to be telling ringers what their birds are... or at least trying to.

And dobry wieczor is good afternoon in Polish.

Early autumn migration on The Thames

I awoke to a nice bit of drizzle early this morning. I'd checked Rotherhithe yesterday, with the only real bird of note being a smart juvenile Yellow-legged Gull. Nothing to write home about when a few miles further east there'd been Razorbill and Guillemot amongst other goodies. So I decided to head out to Cross Ness, arriving just shy of 8am.

The drizzle had slightly abated, but almost as soon as I'd got out of my car and onto The Thames Path by Thamesmead golf centre, I heard the squawking of Sandwich Terns - 4 of them, all heading upriver and past the outfall. Nice start! 10 minutes later a group of 5 juveniles Black Terns came through too, in amongst a rain shower as you'd expect with this species. Then, to my surprise, a short while later a Goldeneye flew in and landed in amongst a small group of Teal; knowing that this wasn't exactly usual for the site I texted John Archer, and he was able to alert Ian Millar and Steve Carter who arrived and got some decent views before the bird flew off west in the direction of Barking Bay.

juvenile Black Tern - nice blodge on the foreflanks

Dark leading edge to the upperwing and obvious dark secondaries on underwing

concolourous rump and tail

quite advanced moult of mantle feathers

A showy juvenile Black Tern - easily the most confiding one I've ever seen at Cross Ness - gave me something to photograph despite the gloomy light. There was also a lone Little Egret, a couple of Common Sandpipers and during the course of the morning, I saw 5 Yellow-legged Gulls (3 adults and 2 juveniles). A quick walk to the paddocks produced a fresh juvenile Wheatear and 100s of Goldfinch. A nice morning's work!

Goldeneye - heading off towards Barking Bay

Cross Ness Seal - increasingly regular in The Thames