Storm Arwen caused a fair bit of damage in our village. Trees and power lines were brought down and several houses and farm buildings sustained serious structural damage. We escaped relatively unscathed suffering just a power outage for three days and a missing roof tile. The garden also escaped relatively unharmed with just a few branches being blown off some of our trees. Others had to be surgically removed with a chainsaw to save further damage to the tree.
One thing we noticed in the immediate aftermath was an increased number of Black-headed Gulls and Common Gulls. We only normally see flocks like this during the spring when they're moving to their breeding grounds. Since Arwen we're regularly getting 4-500 gulls feeding on flooded pasture in front of the house. As usual I check them all for either colour rings or something rarer. I was surprised to find an adult winter plumaged Med Gull with them as, again, this is a bird I usually associate with spring movements.
This one had the bonus of being colour ringed but unfortunately never came close enough for me to read the darvics combination. Very frustrating.
I also picked out at least two separate metal ringed Black-headed Gulls but had no chance of reading those numbers either!
After our recent Cattle Egret (see write up here) and my comments about the scarcity of Little Egrets (even though they breed fairly close) we recently had two Egret days! One day I looked out of one of the the rear facing windows and saw two Little Egrets in with cows and the next day there was one. I'd never have thought 51 years ago when I started birding that I'd see Cattle & Little Egrets in the UK from our rural location. Actually, at nine years old I'd probably never even heard of them!
The gull flock also held this leucistic Black-headed Gull. A very striking looking bird and a useful pointer to the fact that the gulls returning each day were part of the same flock even if the Med Gull hasn't (so far) been seen again.
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