the pied wheatear was shit but things got better

after seeing dave mansells photos of the pied wheatear nick and me headed over mid morning,the bird was not showing well and it was shit,well all the dog shit strewn around like cluster bombs made the visit even worse.

pied wheatear and a bottle of carlsberg

after looking at some geese,namely 2 bean geese and 6 white fronted geese we headed for fish and chips at filey.nick went mad and declared the fish and chips from the 'brown room' 9/10! staggering as i gave them 3/10 i think i won as the only thing good about them was the 4 med gulls that fed on them at holbeck car park

med gull 1st winter

med gull adult

by now the rain had set in,so i suggested a walk round scarbourgh harbour.we parked on the headland.a fishing boat coming into harbour had about 200 gulls following it,immediately i saw a white winged gull flying over the boat,due to the distance i called glaucous gull(the bird looked very large)a few minutes later i refound the bird sat on the water a lot closer,nick set his scope up and thought it was a iceland gull due to the dark bill.
now the confusion set in we both thought we had seen a glaucous gull flying around the boat but at a closer view sat on the water we identified it as a iceland gull!!! 2 bird theory? or just the iceland gull looked larger due to its colour?
getting soaked to the skin i was ready to give up on the day,but saw a great northern diver then nick saw the long tailed duck as nick phoned the news out,i headed to the other side of the harbour,i noticed that some gulls were coming in off the sea,i checked the gulls on the slipway,just herring and great black backed,as nick turned up we had the following conversation

nick 'iceland gull behind you'
me 'eh,what,where?'
nick 'behind you'
me (looking up into the sky) where'
nick ' its stood behind you'
me 'oh fucking hell'

iceland gull

great northern diver