Pink gulls flying north in Texas

Ten days is a long time. Especially when you've swapped the serenity and sun of two weeks birding in Texas, with the cold, mundane birding and day-to-day grind of London. But, life goes on and it's always good to look back on experiences with fondness. I should have done an update at the weekend, but despite trying and some nice looking conditions things didn't really happen - just a Hobby, a 1st-winter Med Gull and a female Wheatear at Crossness.

Getting back to Texas now. Up until this most recent trip, unbelievably the only Franklin's Gulls I'd ever seen had been in Britain. And not many of them either - no more than a handful - since that first one I saw on a Gloucestershire rubbish dump in January 1996. So, enjoying a bit of larid action, seeing a load of these peachy boys was a bit of a target of mine. And they didn't disappoint. Good to see them with Laughing Gulls - really diminutive and nicely pink-flushed.

adult Franklin's Gull at Rollover Pass, Texas April 2014

What was excellent was how they went through in pulses on one of the days - just looking up at the sky and seeing groups of up to a few hundred head purposefully north. And as soon as you saw them, they'd drift off into the distance and that'd be that.