Allerton Tip Iceland Gull

The one advantage of these very breezy days is that the gulls at Allerton will at least be all pointing in the same direction!  This helps in looking at and assessing shades of grey and any darker (or paler) backed gulls stand out that much better.  With the winds from the north today, most of the gulls were actually rear-on, rather than the usual side-on.  No repeat of the 2nd-winter Iceland from last Friday, and the gulls were very flighty, being put up by a couple of Red Kites which looked fantastic in the low bright sunlight highlighting every hint of colour in the birds.  It soon became obvious that many of the gulls were actually in the dip the other side of the bank.  I drove round to look from the farm road parallel to the old A1, and waited for the gulls to fly up. With the sun now right behind me and the distant sky dark grey and dropping curtains of snow, when the gulls flew up they really stood out against the background.  Sure enough, the 2nd-winter Iceland Gull was soon picked out among the hundreds of Herring Gulls, and it lazily flew off to the north.

So, the threat of the first washing pit to be filled in may have passed, indeed the earth-moving equipment seem to have excavated another deeper pool just to the north of the main pit.  Perhaps my unacknowledged correspondence with the land-fill company actually worked - who knows.....