Paul's Birding Diary

Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th November 2010 A male Reed Bunting was present for much of today on my bird table (above) ; counts of 24 Chaffinches (yesterday) and nine Greenfinches (today) were the highest so far of the winter. A walk around the local Quedgeley patch yesterday produced a Water Rail at the canal end of Dimore Brook, and a Kingfisher between here and Clearwater.

Sunday 21st November 2010 I am still trying to re-acclimatise to the cold following my recent holiday in hot and sunny Tenerife; I'll post a report from the holiday soon. Perhaps a spell in the Holden Tower would be just the thing to toughen me back up, I thought! With just a flask of hot tea to keep me going, a coupe of hours this morning at the trust produced a good selection of birds including a gull apparently matching the one photographed by James on 12th , believed to be a hybrid Herring and Lesser Black-backed. The photographs below show the bird compared to the standard 'local' specification Argenteus Herring. The large size of the bird, especially the head and bill makes me wonder whether the Lesser B. liaison was with an Argentatus (Scandanavian) Herring.