Sunday, 23 March 2014

Exmouth Glaucous.

Today was a family day. Since his birthday a few weeks back, I'd been promising my little boy a trip to Toys R Us in Exeter so that he could spend his birthday money. Afterwards, we headed for Exmouth for lunch so that he could play on the sand, even though it felt freezing in the strong northerly breeze today!  After nearly three hours of sandcastle building, we were all ready to head home. I'd been keeping a keen eye open for this Glaucous which appeared a couple of days ago but hadn't seen any sign of it. In a last ditch attempt to connect with it, I stopped at the quayside car park near the mouth of the Exe and as I pulled in around, there it was. It was the only gull in the car park and only 10 ft from the car!  Luckily I already had my camera close by so without having to get out I managed a few good snaps of it and a very short video clip (my boy could only keep quiet for 15 seconds, so that's all I managed), lovely young bird though.

1st or 2nd winter Glaucous Gull: R. Harris
1st or 2nd winter Glaucous Gull: R. Harris
1st or 2nd winter Glaucous Gull: R. Harris
Showing the extent of the bill damage, not nice!
Fight, fight, fight!!
Short video

It clearly has an injury to the culmen but seemed perfectly ok.

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