March 2025 — Just A Bird

March birding was limited due to a couple of important visits to the UK, but the first proper summer migrants started coming in as usual. The first obvious migrants were 2 Chiffchaffs in the coastal bushes at Fort Hommet on 4th, but I didn’t get my first Wheatears until 14th, a little later than usual. A Swallow heading up the coast at Cobo on 17th was an early sighting but the hirundines were pretty late coming in, with 28th the first real obvious date for Sand Martins.

I did miss one or two good birds being away, and one of them was a super-rare American Herring Gull found by Wayne the day I first departed. It disappeared before I returned, only to reappear again just as I was going on my second journey. When I came back late in the month I had a couple of looks for it to no avail, but thankfully I got a call from Wayne on Saturday afternoon, 29th March, that it had returned to its regular spot on Perelle Beach. I raced down there and was pleased to see it still present. Not only a new species for me in Guernsey, but also in the UK and the World! Of course, when I was a young birder, AHG was not actually a species, but a subspecies, so I didn’t really pay attention to it at the time, so I may have seen it in Canada years ago but I don’t know either way.

American Herring Gull - Perelle, 29 Mar 25

As can be seen from the photo above it was a first-winter bird, but it wasn’t a super-obvious individual and kudos for Wayne for picking it out. It does have quite a few features though once you look at it that give some clues. AHGs are often bigger and bulkier than European Herrings (EHG) but this bird was not obviously so. Its underparts were a different colour than you would expect on a EHG, being a more uniform soft brown colour, with gently paler fringes, and an almost velvety texture (seen more clearly on the photo below). EHG is typically whitish below with dark brown blotches of varying degrees. A good feature is a darker, more solid brown upper mantle and hind-neck which was very obvious on this bird, contrasting with the rest of the plumage. AHG heads can be quite whitish, this one was whitish in base colour, but still had lots of streaks, including a darker mask behind the eye. Bills of AHG can be very pale and “dipped in ink” - this one’s bill was a bit manky, but had the basic pattern albeit faded. I found that the bird had a bit of the Frankenstein’s monster about it - looking like a few different gulls’ body parts stitched together!

In the photo above you can see a few other features. The underwing is a very dark chocolate brown. Both the upper and undertail coverts and the rump are heavily barred with brown - each feather being more brown than it is white. EHG is much less heavily barred in these areas. You can also see the very dark tail.

The tail pattern can be seen more easily in this flight photo. Every tail feather is fully dark brown with no pale base at all. Only the outer tail feather’s outer fringe has a row of pale dots along the edge. EHG would generally show some pale bases to the tail feathers, even on dark birds. The plumage of this bird is in a bit of a state, with the outer primaries snapped off, especially on the left wing.

Just A Bird

Just A Bird

Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

Just A Bird

Just A Bird