1st summer Franklin’s Gull Larus pipixcan
Devon, UK. 26 April 2006

“Hey buddy, d’you know which way North America’s at?”

Following hard on the heels of my trip to South Wales with Jo yesterday, I was obviously still in the mood to “go wild” and decided to go and see a 1st summer Franklin’s Gull Larus pipixcan that had turned up in north Devon - umm, on the 12th of February…undoubtedly one of the record numbers of North American gulls that arrived in the UK on the tail-ends of the hurricanes that battered the US last November.

It seems I’m setting some sort of a pattern with my “not-so-rapid responses” this year (I finally went to see a Dark-throated Thrush in Wales three months after it turned up, and managed to drive the twenty miles or so to see a small flock of wintering Hawfinches about three months after they were first found), but at least I’m true to my stated aim of keeping a year-list without taking it too seriously…Besides which there is a benefit of going to see long-staying rarities long after they turn up - and that’s that there will hardly be anyone else still bothering to go and see them at the same time: in other words you get the bird to yourself and can get good views without having to worry about whose tripod you’re stumbling over or whose view you’re blocking (which doesn’t happen that often I admit, as I’m hardly the same height as your average Chinese basketball player) - it’s all much more like the birding I do abroad, when I sometime seem to have whole National Parks to myself…

Anyway, this particular Franklin’s Gull has taken to spending much of its time probing for food in short grass right next to the road by the entrance of the small Northam Burrows Country Park near Bideford. When it first arrived in February there were presumably wintering Black-headed Gulls around, but they’ve all gone now, and - if it weren’t distinctive enough anyway - it’s now the only small, partially dark-headed, quite dark-backed, 1st summer gull around - ie it’s really very hard to miss.

I got some really fantastic views from the car until a dog-walker spooked “my” bird - but to be honest it didn’t seem all that bothered and just lifted into the breeze and soared no more than a hundred yards away before continuing its search for worms and the like further down the shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1st summer Franklin’s Gull Larus pipixcan, Devon

We left Northam after the gull flew onto some wooden jetty posts in the small bay. Generally I hate to anthropomorphicise (about as much as I hate trying to type a word as complex as ‘anthropomorphicise’), but it’s hard not to feel slightly sorry for this stray, stood staring out to sea either wondering where on earth all its fellow Franklin’s Gulls have got to, or trying sadly to mentally re-trace its steps the night a hurricane picked it up and blew it thousands of miles from home…

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.