Sunday 15th January 2023: New Life Tick…and 100 birds!

 Today we travelled across the border to windy Hampshire in search of a Sabine’s Gull which had been reported last week. This would be a lifetime tick, so I managed to persuade Tim to drive across to Langstone Harbour.

When we arrived it did not take us long to locate the bird - we followed a constant stream of birdwatchers along the sea wall, in the direction of a lagoon at Southmoor nature reserve, near Budd’s Farm sewage works. Our target bird was sat on its own, right out in the open on a small island within the lagoon. I had not expected it to be that easy!

Another surprise was to discover it was sporting pretty much summer plumage, just missing the red eye ring of full breeding plumage. It had a charcoal hood, with distinct black outline, and a yellow-tipped bill making it easy to identify. It sat on the muddy bank for some time, then suddenly took off, revealing its distinctive wing patterning, again unlike any of the other gulls. It disappeared over the trees, but in just a short time it reappeared and this time stood preening, allowing us to observe the colour of its legs and just make out the dark underside of the wing. So a good range of views to begin to get a sense of this lovely, not commonly seen bird.

Sabine’s Gull

Elsewhere on the lagoon a female Goosander was a new tick for the year, although it looked suspiciously like it was suffering from bird flu, with a trail of guana alongside the resting bird. A Greenshank was seen fleetingly, before disappearing into the saltmarsh. On the shoreline of the Solent we found Brent Geese, Wigeon,  Dunlin, Oystercatcher, Grey Plover and Oystercatcher. There were reports of Black necked Grebe on the water, but it was blowing a gale and we couldn’t hold the scopes steady enough to even attempt to pick these out on the choppy water.

It was only as we were driving home that we realised our annual tally was now 99, clearly an unacceptable number at which to finish the day, so a quick detour to Goring Gap for a late lunch in the car, enabled us to scan the roosting gull flock where we were able to pick out  several Med Gulls to take us to the magic 100!