The white-winged party continues in full swing, and I'm very glad to be a part of it. Today was another exceptional day, not only because I broke a record (I never saw 3 Iceland Gulls on one day), but mainly because I found two of them myself and I saw my first ever adult. But there's more. Both of the birds I saw and photographed somewehere along the Wadden coast between Ternaard and Wierum had clear dark markings in both the primaries as the secondaries, and those markings were most obvious and dark in the outer webs of the primaries (at least, that's what I see on the, albeit bad, pictures), pointing strongly towards Kumlieni. I realize that the variety in glaucoides and kumlieni is tremendous, and that it's very hard, if not impossible to say where dark glaucoides ends and kumlieni starts, but these pictures at least show a bird that strongly tends towards kumlieni (I've seen "worse" birds on the internet labelled Kumlien's Gull, also from breeding grounds). I'm afraid we'll never know for sure, but I really couldn't care less: no matter what they are, they made my day. If you're interested in opinios about the birds, check here and here As I said, a very nice bones in the afternoon was the adult bird in the harbour of Lauwersoog. Best of the rest today were some Rough-legged Buzzards (among which my first adult in a very long time), a Pale-bellied Brant, a Red-breasted Goose, 20 Shore Larks, some fly-by Lapland Buntings, 6 Hooded Crows and a very distant White-tailed Eagle.
For those of you interested: Friday afternoon there were rather large numbers of gulls at the gull roost in Groningen. I just found one Yellow-legged Gull (a nice 3CY) as well as a probable hybrid Caspian x Herring Gull, but I feel something better is about to be found here. Who's gonna do it!? Pics here
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