Liking gulls?

Yesterday was an exciting day and today was never going to live up to that but never-the-less it’s not been too bad a day. I started in the Zoological Museum in Oslo taking photos of the first Subalpine Warbler for Norway which is held in the collection there. This species is about to be split into three separate species which are far from easy to tell apart from each other but hopefully with this specimen we will be able to assign it species and we also have the chance to run a DNA sequence.

After that I headed downtown to look for gulls. There were a few birders around including some hardcore twitchers who had either driven overnight or flown from Stavanger on the west coast. The bird took a few hours to show – some had been waiting since the early hours – but just after noon it suddenly appeared. It showed exceptionally well as it fought for scraps of bread and eventually secured itself a large bit before then moving away (although still in sight) to sleep off its meal meaning that people who arrived later had to be content with poor views.

My hope today was to get to see one of the Caspian Gulls well but although some people had enjoyed good views early in the morning whilst waiting for the real action to start I was not lucky enough to see one. Always another day though and the gull autumn is still very young so many more good birds could still turn up for those with the right disposition (it feels wrong to say this but I might be getting interested myself...).