Stubble

It's the Saturday morning of Big Garden Birdwatch weekend, apples have been halved and strewn in the front garden, two scoops of bird seed have been liberally scattered in sheltered spots, I am stood at the kitchen window eagerly anticipating feathery fauna feeding, and I haven't even shaved yet.

The RSPB's citizen science wildlife survey, reputedly the largest of its kind in the UK, is in full swing across the land whilst, here in Orkney, yet another gale is making things a bit challenging. Not for me, obvs, I'm sat indoors with a mug of tea, but the birds are a little reluctant to battle with the driving rain.

Normally, by now, on any of the 363 days in the year which aren't part of the BGBW, there would have been a throng of hungry birds (from a single female Chaffinch to a horde of quarrelsome Rooks) busily feeding.

Whatever. The. Weather. 🙄

Perhaps Sunday will be more to their liking.

Most of the wildlife action of late has actually been on the opposite side of the house, across the plot of land behind us (shortly due to have a house built on it) and in a field which has been left as Winter stubble. We like Winter stubble, whether it's due to an ecologically-enlightened farmer or just that the ground's too wet to put machinery on it, and wildlife likes it too.

Flocks of Rooks and Jackdaws forage across it daily. Gulls roost in a hollow which provides a little shelter from westerly storms. A pair of Brown Hares are usually to be found hunkered down together, he mate-guarding her, she being all "Eh, whatevs". Other cast members in this short cereal are the local Starling flock and a bunch of Rock Doves, the provenance of the latter being watered down somewhat by the odd feral pigeon. Very occasionally, we spot a couple of male Reed Buntings, which must have ventured up from the burn in the valley. But what we're not finding are Skylarks, a species that when I think of them in Winter, are usually associated with stubble fields. It's quite strange.

The gull flock is mostly made up of Herring Gulls in various stages of life from immature teenagers to adults in Winter plumage. Sometimes there's a few Common Gulls amongst them too. Recently, Megan spotted a big gull which wasn't a Herring and wasn't a Great Black-backed either. It didn't have black tips to its wings, which gave it a white winged appearance and is the tell-tale sign that this is a gull from the far north.

In Winter, around the shores of Orkney, it is usually possible to find at least two species of white wingers: Glaucous Gull Larus hyperboreus; or Iceland Gull Larus glaucoides. In theory, it isn't difficult to work out which is which, but it helps if your mystery gull is stood next to a Herring Gull and you can see its beak and wing tips and tail. The bird we were dealing with seemingly took great delight in roosting slightly away from the other gulls, sitting down in the stubble (thereby hiding its rear end) or disappearing behind the other gulls so that it wasn't possible to see all of it at once.

After much viewing through binoculars, the taking of a bazillion blurry photos and recourse to several bird guides, we reckoned that we had a bird which was bigger than a Herring Gull, not smaller, and we were looking at an adult Glaucous Gull in Winter plumage. We felt certain enough to go public with this information, so we fired up the local birding social media feeds and said so. Nervously said so, it must be stressed, because sure enough, back came many other opinions, some agreeing with us but others varying from Iceland L. glaucoides, to Kumlien's Gull L. glaucoides kumlieni a subspecies of Iceland Gull, to a Glaucous/Herring Gull hybrid, to Point Barrow Glaucous Gull L. hyperboreus barrovianus a subspecies of Glaucous Gull from the Pacific coast of Canada.

In the end, we were happy to stick with our original ID, due to the beak size and the length of the primary feather projection over the tail.

Bigger than the Herring Gulls, and dwarfing the Common Gull on the right

Primary projection over the tail less than the length of the beak

Sadly, we're unlikely to coax it into the garden for the Birdwatch survey, although it does visit our neighbour's rooftop when she's putting out kitchen scraps for the birds (and it is usually a scrap, between the Rooks and the Herring Gulls).

If the weather doesn't improve for tomorrow, it really will be the last straw.