Natural Selection

Given the weather forecast I decided to forego the planned seawatch in the morning, and head for the estuary at Skippool in the predicted better evening weather.

It was a glorious evening when I joined Paul Slade scoping the estuary. He’d had 30 Common Sandpipers, and a couple of Raven I eventually saw on the distant drumlin at Hambleton. I then picked up a gull with a green Darvic ring, which proved to be our old friend French ringed R14T.

Paul and I were both pleased to see this bird because it’s something of a Skippool staple. It was ringed as a chick in France in 2009, and has been coming to the Wyre Estuary every year since. So tonight it was back for its fourteenth autumn. This year the site where it had been thought to be breeding most years had a significant outbreak of bird flu, so it wasn’t clear whether it would be back.

You may be able to see from the picture above from tonight that R14T has been in the wars a bit. It clearly has a sore right leg which it wasn’t able to put on the ground whilst we were watching.

I also picked up a Black-headed Gull from the local scheme (blue Darvics sequence beginning with 2). It was at the limit of the range for reading the inscription but we eventually clinched it as 241E. This bird was ringed in Stanley Park in early 2022, and seen there again earlier this year (by me it transpires). As such not that interesting, but hopefully it will get seen on its nesting grounds at some point to give further insight.