Yellow-Legged Gull (58 in NZ26)

Knowing I was going to take on NZ26 in 2015 we did a recce along the river from the Metro Centre to The Sage on Boxing Day.  I was more than happy to find bullfinches under the high level bridge, but this was out done on the walk back by finding a 1^st Winter Yellow-legged Gull on the mud by Dunston Staith. The gull immediately stood out with its white head and heavy, blunt-ended black bill.  With 8x bins there was enough detail at close range to make this a good find.

I went back on 27^th December and it had moved to the other side of the Tyne but with a 32x scope it was not a problem to get details of flight and other feather tracts, and I must send my submission in, but obviously now to two County recorders –the downside of ‘the river runs through it’.

Negative reports from 28^th (@gatesheadbirder) and by me on 1^st and 3^rd Jan made me forget about it.  However, this is one of the easiest spots on the South of the river to quickly park and check the mud for waders and I called in at lunch on 14^th Jan at low tide.  This is tetrad G by the way and it also straddles the river.

One shelduck, one redshank and a few teal were close, but most other things were the Elswick side.  Luckily, I always keep a Kowa 501 x20 scope in the care and it gave decent views of the curlew and gulls out there.  It included one with a white head, black beak and black eye.  All of these made it stand out from the similar sized herring gulls there.  The sharp angled forehead and squared off back of the head were the same as the bird I had seen in 2014.   The dark primaries against the browner tertials seemed to change colour again when it stretched its wings above its back.  After 20 minutes it took off and flew down the river showing a black tail preceded by a white rump.

A good ID article by Martin Garner in British Birds will help as a refresher if you plan to go see.

I tell this story not to help it get prejudged and avoid the string connotations of me being the only person so far to have seen this bird.  I tell it more to show in a couple of weeks of this NZ26 challenge, for the chance of a good bird, I can be that birder who gets a scope and monopod out in an urban setting.  Until now even the bins have stayed firmly under the coat in some tetrads –C Benwell; D Blakelaw; and V Leam Lane .

Gale force westerly winds and low sun made looking for the YLGull at lunch on 15^th ‘challenging’ to impossible.