Migrants, patch tick and not technically twitching gulls... Weekly Highlights 07/09/2014

Yes, a weekly highlights page that posted no weekly highlights for two weeks.  The reasons behind this are manifest and for you dear reader I expect that they are not particularly interesting when you want to see pictures of birds.  So let's do birds then.  

Lots of them.  

Like this one.

Not a particularly good week for photos, but a good one for birds.  Birds everywhere on the patch this week and some nice ones too.  Wheatears, Whinchats, Redstarts, Black Redstarts, an absolutely stonking adult Hobby at point blank range, and rounded off at the weekend with a Pied Flycatcher in the gloom.  I had seen reports of Pied Flycatchers that were doable in my lunch hour and I was sorely tempted.  But I thought, no, if I go chasing up there I won't know what was on the patch, and I was thankfully vindicated with a lovely patch tick.

Pied Flycatcher doing lovely patch tick

 And so to the weekend.  I'd seen some chatter on the interweb about Caspian Gulls at Cromer and thought that I'd go and have a look.  This doesn't count as twitching as I was only going for a speculative look, and there were no other birders there.

Unfortunately it was in fading light, and as I was looking for a 1st winter bird I almost overlooked the adult.  Oops!  Now, my previous experience of Caspian Gulls has been stringing funny looking Herring Gulls and reading about them in a very big book, but because of this I have had a fair handle on what to look for (I believe that these are called diagnostic features, and one absolutely must know what a gonys angle is).  Having seen some of the pictures on social media of what people are saying are Caspian Gulls, I'm not so sure myself.  However, there was a nice Yellow-legged Gull kicking about too.

Adult Caspian Gull, Cromer

Yellow-legged Gull, Cromer

Ended the week with a field full of Wheatears, and a late-ish accompaniment of Sand Martin and House Martin which was very pleasant indeed.