GLAUCOUS TOPS GULL GLUT AT BEDDINGTON

A tweet from Johnny Allan yesterday morning meant gulls were going to be the order of the day. 1w Glaucous Gull on main lake. With work on the quiet side, a first trip of the year to Beddington was well overdue.  

Beddington – part birding paradise, part refuse tip – is famous for its gulls, especially during the winter months. This winter has been exceptional, with up to five Iceland Gulls, plus a number of Mediterranean Gulls, a few Caspians and the odd Yellow-legged Gull regularly seen at this exceptional Surrey site. Then, to add to the list, on Wednesday a Glaucous Gull arrived.

I don't normally get that excited by gulls but my attitude has recently changed. This is part due because I found a Med Gull and an Iceland Gull (I now know it definitely was one) on my local patch at Holmethorpe this past week.

With so many gulls at Holmethorpe it seemed a bit daft not to search through them just in case something interesting grabbed my attention. The trouble with gulls is they go through so many stages of moult during their early years before they are recognisable as the species in question. Throw in the subtleties between the big gull species and you're in for a bit of a headache.

I had to get to Beddington before the end of the winter, just to garner more gull birding experience. With all the 'white-wingers' I wanted to see showing well on and off during the morning, I was hopeful it would be a good visit.

When I first arrived, I wasn't so confident. I could only stay for about an hour, and there must have been about 10,000 gulls on site – the place was teeming with them – so it was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. With the remarkable help of Johnny Allan and Frankie, however, I got to see what I came for.

The five Iceland Gulls that had been seen earlier in the morning were not apparent at first, but Frankie, amazingly, found the first winter Glaucous Gull (105) on the tip in amongst the throng of black, white and grey birds. I don't know how he did it – one gull in amongst a sea of gulls. I have to admit, though, that once I found it, it stood out a mile. It was a big brute of a bird, squarer and bulkier in shape and, at a distance, very pale grey in colour.

We then focused on the main lake and I managed to find one of the Iceland Gulls, a first-winter almost totally white gull, known by the Beddington group as 'New Whitey'. 

At the same time, the group of birders also on site found the Kumlien's Gull, to the left of the first-winter bird, with its back facing us. I viewed it through Johnny's scope and then soon after the birds all took off. 

The first-winter Iceland Gull was easy to see amongst this cloud of gulls and eventually most of the birds landed again. It was then Johnny spotted the handsome Glaucous Gull was on the water right in front of us. Fantastic. What a bruiser this fella was. An impressive bird to look at, we got great views of it as it toyed with a chicken leg, which it must have found on its recent visit to the tip.

I only had limited time, but with the feeder close by I also had excellent views of the Beddington Tree Sparrows (106) and about ten Reed Bunting that were migrating around the seed.

All in all, a cracking session at Beddington with a species of bird that, up until now, I hadn't really got to grips with. From now on, I'm ready to focus on the local patch to see what I can find.

CRASH TEST

It's not been a good week. Not enough work and too many bills, numerous 180-mile round trips to Hitchin to visit the mother-in-law in hospital after her knee replacement (I'm sure it was something else that needed replacing, but I can't think what...).

We went up to Hertfordshire on Sunday afternoon but didn't get far. Driving up Gatton Bottom Road, the lane that runs parallel with the M25, heading for junction 8 of the motorway at Reigate Hill, we had an accident.


A car coming down the road was waiting to turn into a driveway on my side of the road, but for some reason decided to turn in just as I was about ten yards away from him. He then noticed I was there and stopped in the middle of the road. I was doing about 50mph. I could have just jammed on the brakes and t-boned his car - not a good option as his passenger would almost certainly have been hurt, so I locked up and tried to steer the car left, away from the stationary vehicle and towards the driveway. But he panicked and continued to turn in.


We inevitably made contact but it was only a glancing blow. Predictably, his car - well, his father's car - only had a scuff down the front grill and bumper, while mine had a stuffed front wing. He admitted it was his error. We were all a bit shaken. In the end we got away with it, because the car was still driveable. We carried on our way to Hitchin.

I was disappointed that I hadn't rescued the situation completely and that it had shaken me. Ten years ago, when I was editor at Motorsport News, I held a racing license and had raced at Brands Hatch and Lydden Hill in production cars, Legends Racing cars, Zip Formula single-seaters and the like. I had driven a NASCAR Winston Cup car around Rockingham Motorspeedway, near Corby. I had driven the British Championship-winning Hillclimb car of David Grace - which had a 750bhp Benetton Ford F1 engine stuck in the back of it.

I had also raced stock cars for a short time in the mid-nineties. I even had a two-seater F1 ride around the Misano racetrack in Italy with Fernando Alonso. Yep, that's right - the Fernando Alonso. So I was used high speed, and particularly with the stock car racing, to the knocks. But here I was, in a pokey Peugeot 206 diesel, having had the first shunt on the road since I passed my driving test in the early 1980s, sweating and a bit stunned by the whole thing.

I think it's down to preparation. In a racing car, you are hyped-up before you start and you know what to expect, whereas when an idiot turns in front of you for no apparent or logical reason, it is a bit of a shock.

So, that was Sunday. It is now Thursday. Nothing much to report on the bird front until this evening. The weather was sub-tropical for the first half of the week, but then had turned autumnal in the blink of an eye today. All week there have been some interesting birds dropping in at Beddington Farm, notably Wood Sandpipers and a number of Garganey. Last year, Holmethorpe had visits from both these species, but nothing this year up till now. I wanted to go to the Farm to catch up with the Wood Sandpipers at some point but couldn't find a window of opportunity.


Then, this evening I had need to go to the Waitrose in Banstead, so I took a detour. Roger 'Dodge' Browne kindly gave me the location of a Wood Sand that had dropped in at Beddington today. It was probably still there, so I went for a look. Remarkably, this is the first time I've been to Beddington all year. I don't know why that is, apart from the fact that I haven't been birding half as often as I would like in 2011.



Thankfully, the Wood Sandpiper (150) was still on the southern lake, sleeping most of the time, but it was good to catch up with one. While I was there I also went to see the Tree Sparrows (151). These birds are a Beddington speciality - the only site in Surrey where you can find them. There were more than 20 Sparrows on the feeders, but as soon as I turned up, they flew off into the trees. They were making quite a din until a Kestrel ghosted through and it all went very quiet. And that's how it stayed.

So, that was it for the evening. Another visit to Hitchin is on the cards for tomorrow (whoopeedoo), and then it's my birthday on Sunday. I'm planning a visit to Elmley Marshes or somewhere similar, expecting to see plenty of great birds - here's hoping...

Surrey (including Spelthorne) 2011 list: 151
This time last year: 143