New Garganey

While doing rounds of the hides this morning I found a new in female type Garganey, the first for about three weeks. It was feeding on the western side of the lagoon and did a very good job of submerging its head just as I pressed the camera shutter. So good that out of the 30+ photos I took, only two had its head in!

Garganey

Also on the Lagoon were 94 Pintail.

Pintail

I've received news back on the five ringed Mediterranean Gulls I read two weeks ago. Two ringed in France, two in Belgium and one in Holland.

The most interesting one is white 3P17 from Belgium. It was ringed in 2002 as a chick making it an impressive 12 years old. The oldest Med Gull recorded is 15, so not far off! This bird seems to have spent its late summers/autumns in the mid South Wales area and returned Belgium and Germany in the winter and breeding period for most of its years.

White 31A7 was ringed in northern Holland in 2009 aged three. It was seen the next year eating Black-headed Gull eggs (!) at a colony also in northern Holland, and the following summer it was seen for the first time at Llanelli before flying down to my home county of Devon where it was picked up on the Axe Estuary during January 2012.

Still a few dragonflies on the wing including some Southern Hawkers, one of which perched up nicely for me the other day.

Southern Hawker