Easter birding

Hi readers, before I start I would just like to say happy Easter and I hope you are having a good day, moving on to mine and dads birding today we decided to get to Gailey in hope of seeing the two Little Gulls that were about (1st winter and adult). Luckily the weather held out and the only problem we had was the strong winds that were passing through. We first decided to take a look at the main sailing lake as we suspected the birds had been seen on there, after looking through the gulls on the main lake we had little success.

We next decided to take a look at the fishing pool which had a large number of mainly black headed gulls which we thought could be promising, after around ten minutes of searching through the gulls with little success we were met by another birdwatcher who was looking for the same birds, after another ten minutes we were met by a further two birders who had luckily seen the birds and we hadn't seen them simple because they were not viewable from where we were.

At first we only saw one of the gulls which happened to be the 1st winter Little Gull, the bird appeared to be feeding right in front of some fishermen, the bird then flew of towards a larger group of black headed gulls and disappeared, and as we were about to disappear ourselves we turned to see the 1st winter Little Gull and the adult Little Gull right in front of us feeding together. This was the first time I had seen Little Gull  and we were pleased with seeing them.

After seeing the two little gulls we decided to take a look for the two White Fronted Geese that were still hanging around in a NW field with a group of Canada and Greylag geese, whilst walking towards the field they were usually in we saw the two geese flying over towards the field, when approaching the field we saw the two geese were quite close to the footpath still with the group of Canada and Greylag geese. We stayed for around ten minutes watching the geese and then decided to retreat to the car. Here's our full sightings list from the site,

Gailey- Little Gull x2, White fronted Goose x2, Phesant x1, Buzzard x1, Tufted Duck 10+, Little Grebe x3, Great crested Grebe x4, Greylag Goose 5+, canada Goose 5+, Mute Swan x2, Cormorant 5+, Grey Heron 2+.

A few hours after our visit to Gailey we decided to take our usual look at Bartley Green reservoir in hope f catching a few early gulls with little success,

Bartley Green Reservoir- Black headed Gull 20+, Lesser Black backed Gull 10+, Pied Wagtail x1, Common Gull x2, Herring Gull 5+.

Some of you may have noticed we DIDN'T GO TO SANDWELL VALLEY today, which as you can see from the capital letters is very irregular, we will most likely go there next weekend and I may be paying a few visits to the reserve in the week if I get time.

Adult Little Gull Gailey Res by me.



1st winter Little Gull Gailey by me.
 

White fronted Goose gailey by me.

The White fronted Geese at Gailey by me

Hope you all like the photos, I may do some posts in the week if I get to Sandwell Valley but if not there will most likely be a post on Sunday if not I will do a post telling you.

Thanks for reading and have a good easter all- WMBB