The Gull that never fails to bother
It's taken me a good six weeks to write this down. And I must warn you - it's about a gull. On 17th September, about an hour before dusk, I noticed a lone larger gull amongst the Black-headeds at Priory CP that seemed a little "different". I expected to pick my bins up and pass it off as a simple argenteus Herring, or perhaps the more intriguing conclusion of Caspian, of which a few do the rounds in Beds each autumn and winter. But, no. It was a third-winter, but that's where the certainty stopped. My first thought was "cute". Not an instinctive argenteus reaction; in fact, far from it. I find that feelings of appearance are incredibly important with gulls, almost more so than the plumage itself. In fact, the feeling here was of an oversized Common Gull. It felt closer to this than Herring. Nothing seemed quite right for Caspian (aside from a rather long bill completely lacking any gonydeal angle, and perhaps the upper primary pattern - the primari...