Record Black-headed Gulls and first Goosander

I was looking at the Sheffield Bird Study Group website last night, when I noticed a record of 240 Black-headed Gulls and 2 Goosanders at Linacre on Friday. Both records were noteworthy, as the gull's record is the highest ever count for this site as far as I am aware, and the Goosander record is the first of this winter period.

With these records fresh in my mind, I decided to go down to Linacre this morning to see what was about. I took a loaf of bread with me, and managed to attract a respectable 132 Black-headed Gulls down, which was my best count of the year (so far). I managed to entice a few of these birds onto the wall, so I could scan their legs for colour rings, but, as you can see, all the legs were bare!

Black-headed Gulls

Whilst walking around I also managed to spot 2 male Goosanders on the middle reservoir, along with 126 Mallards (my highest count since January), 10 Tufted Ducks, 9 Moorhens and 3 Coots. Unfortunately, despite a lot of searching, I didn't manage to find any Mandarin Ducks at all!

 

The sun came out every now and then during my walk, and I managed to grab a photograph of this Treecreeper. Not an easy species to spot, never mind photograph, I was really pleased to get these shots.

 

Treecreeper

 

Other species seen in the woodland included Jay, Crow, Magpie, Blackbird, Robin, Wren, Great-spotted Woodpecker along with Blue, Great, Long-tailed and Coal Tit.