Long Tailed Ducks and a bit of 'Gulling'

Yesterday (Sunday 01/12) Dave James & myself started early at Summer Leys, in particular Mary's Lake where the previous day 3, yes 3 Long Tailed Ducks were found. Thankfully, they were still there in the far north east corner. After viewing them from the gate, we headed round to get a closer look. There were lots of winter thrushes around, as well as a vocal Chiffchaff and a Kingfisher.

One of the Long Tailed Ducks tended to split off from the other two for quite a bit of time with the two showing very well in bright sunshine at pretty close quarters. They tended to rest for a while before constantly diving for food.

So after enjoying the ducks, along with Jon & Kirsty, we moved onto Ditchford GP, (west of Ditchford Lane) to have a look through some gulls. We parked up at the embankment in Wellingborough and walked down along the river. The pits had a lot of gulls on and after initially not finding too much we moved up to the north side of the pits to look through the large gathering of gulls in the fields. Initially there was nothing then Dave thought he had a Caspian. I got onto the area of the flock he was looking at then suddenly noticed at the back of the flock was an adult Iceland Gull! Boom! It showed, largely obscured for a few minutes before sadly heading off towards Sidegate Landfill with several other large gulls. Poor record shots below:

After getting views of 2-3 Red Kites overhead and hearing a very local Chiffchaff, we headed back past Viaduct Pit. We soon flushed a Great White Egret. It flew around for a while before dropping down behind some trees on the edge of the pit. A nice surprise, but nowadays, not the exciting find they once were with Northants having more than it's fair share of birds. There could be as many as 6 birds in the county at present! 
I then picked out what I was pretty certain was a Caspian Gull on Viaduct Pit amongst more good numbers of large gulls. Later inspection of my photos and confirmation from Steve Fisher did indeed nail it as a very smart 2nd-winter Caspian Gull.

On leaving, we again came across the Great White Egret on the pit the other side of the viaduct. It showed very well before taking flight and cruising right over out heads and back towards viaduct pit. Below are a couple of incredible shots of it taken by Dave James with Jon's camera.