I had a text from Jerry Warne this morning just before 9am to say he'd found four Little Gulls on Brookland Lake. I had no intention of going down to the lakes today but this would be a first ever for me at New Hythe, so with wet hair and yesterdays whiskers, I hit the ground running. Eddie and David were in the car park enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee when I arrived and they assured me that the Gulls were still present on the far side of the lake, or had been a couple of minutes earlier when they left them. I've heard this before of course 'you should have been here earlier', but thankfully they were indeed still there.
They were easy to pick out from the many Black-headed Gulls on the lake, the smaller size and graceful, Tern like flight gave them away. But the most noticeable difference was the dark underwing of the Little Gulls which stood out like a sore thumb as they delicately picked insects from the surface film of the water.
So the NH year list moves on to 79 species, but it should have been 80. Some time later I received another text, this one from Martin Warburton to say he had just seen a Red Kite drift over Alders Lake in a SW direction and straight over 'our' lake at home. Despite a dash out to the garden I was too late, what a shame! Still, you can't win them all, and it's only March, plenty of time yet to fly a Kite over the lakes.
