Being off school and having a reasonable day weather wise, Jayne and I decided to go for a walk around the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. This site is just off Junction 38 of the M1 and, knowing that a Ring-billed Gull has been wintering at Sands Lane Gravel Pits just off junction 40, I managed to convince Jayne that it would be a quick 5 minutes and worth driving that bit further to go and see it. We duly arrived to an empty set of gravel pits and the usual "it was here about 20 minutes ago!!!!!!" from one of the local birders. To cut a long story short, we waited about 1 hour, saw 100+ Black-headed Gulls, half a dozen Common Gulls, a couple of Goosander and a Kingfisher (year tick!). Aaaargh!!!!! Here's a picture of one, probably the same bird, that I saw here back in 2010.
Ring-billed Gull
(note the pale iris - dark in the very similar Common Gull)
To make up for this disappointment we went down the the Sculpture Park and had a lovely walk by the main lake. There is a heronry here and there were about a dozen nests, complete with returning adults- very nice.
The year list has move on 2 species:
83 - Kingfisher
84 - Lesser Redpoll (in garden last week)
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