Gulls for Lunch

Today was a bit of an office day so to break up the screen time, Trev suggested heading to a local piece of estuarine habitat to see what birds might be loitering about. The area in question was Curdbridge - one of the many tidal creeks of the Hamble river, which conveniently is just the road from the office - perfect for a lunchtime dash!

The tide was unfortunately in, hiding all the good grub filled mud so there weren't all that many waders on offer. However as soon as we got out of the car we did catch a quick glimpse of a Common sandpiper. What made the trip worth it was going through a group of gulls and picking up the differences between the Common and Black-headed gulls. I find gulls both interesting and confusing in equal measure. In the picture below its possible to pick out the black-heads with no black head (winter plumage) just a black spot behind the eye, with a peachy coloured bill which will darken with age. The Common gulls have a winter brownish tinge to their head (turns white in the summer) with a yellow bill and are comparatively bigger in size.    

11 Black-headed (one on the far left) & 5 Common gulls (one second in from the right)
(iPhone dodgy digi-scoping)

We also went through some ageing characteristics such as a black terminal bar on the blackheads tail indicating its a first winter bird along with a few other nuggets of information. Its safe to say it was the most informative lunchtime I've had in a long while! Long may it continue!