Sabine's Gull - Pennington Flash, Manchester

When a cracking adult Sabine’s Gull turned up at Pennington Flash last Tuesday, I was keen on seeing this extremely beautiful gull, especially as this particular individual had been flying to within touching distance at times. Just 45 minutes from my house, I soon made the journey after work the next day, with the bird having been showing well and coming to bread throughout the day.

Frequenting the patch of water outside Horrocks Hide (handily just a few paces from the car park) we immediately caught up with this stunning gull, showing amazingly well and sitting happily extremely close to the side of the lake. Having been coming to bread that morning, we brought our own brown loaf to tempt it for a snack even closer to the bank, and sure enough as soon as the bread hit the surface it flew towards us, inquisitively wondering what morsels had been provided and flying to within just a few feet. Sadly, the Sabine’s mustn’t have had a taste for brown bread, as it quickly lost interest, floating a little further away and allowing the resident Mute Swan to gobble up the leftovers.

This is only my second Sabine’s Gull after seeing a juvenile a few years ago at Belvide Reservoir in Staffordshire (which bizarrely showed even closer, coming to within touching distance of the side) but I was really keen to see an adult plumaged bird. With the jet black head, yellow tipped bill and beautiful diagnostic black and white patterned wings, Sabine’s Gulls are unmistakeable in flight and definitely one of our most attractive species of gull. Usually a pelagic species in the UK, breeding in the arctic and only passing through during the autumn when strong gales bring them closer to shore, I have yet to see Sabine’s Gull on the sea. Individuals are often reported from the nearby Wirral coast and the North Wales shoreline during autumn gales in September, so it is definitely worth looking out for birds during strong Northerly and North Westerly winds.

The Pennington Flash bird seems to favour the left hand side of the lake before Horrocks Hide, where there is a small fenced area going down to the lake side. Present now for over a week, it has recently suffered an attack by a Pike, with visible damage sustained to the belly after having been reportedly dragged under the surface of the water. Luckily, the gull made an escape, and looks to be settled here for the time being. 

Red-throated Pipit - Ludworth Moor (Derbyshire/Manchester)

With an alert popping up mid-morning on the Sunday telling us there was a Red-throated Pipit showing in a field up near Manchester on Ludworth Moors, it was a no brainer to take the trip to try and catch up with this local mega, hoping it would stay the course and remain loyal to the site for the rest of the day.

With records usually emanating from the Scilly Isles or as flyover individuals, Red-throated Pipits are notoriously hard to twitch, so it was all systems go heading down the motorway! Usually less than an hour from my house, it was rather unfortunate that we were based in Wales for the night, but we made good progress and managed to arrive on site just after lunch.

With the bird showing well as soon as we arrived, the assembled birders luckily got us on it through their scopes, and we enjoyed great views for all of about 5 seconds before it took high to the air and flew off over in the distance! Would that be it?! A short, sweet and very jammy encounter?!

Luckily the pipit had flown only as far as the field across the track, and after 5 minutes or so it took to the sky again, flying directly over our heads and landing in the original sheep field. Making its distinctive flight call once as it did so, this was a great opportunity to experience the call in the field, and ideal to help nail the ID on any possible flyover Red-throated Pipits in the future.

Walking back to the road, we were able to look over the stone wall across to where the pipit had landed, and after emerging from the tussock it treated us to excellent views on the deck as it fed amongst the grass and sheep poo – taking advantage of the abundance of small insects present. Parading around in front of us, we took in the rich red throat and head, an exceptionally bright bird and standing out from the accompanying Meadow Pipits by a mile.

One of the rarer pipits on the British list, the bright red colouration of the head and throat were distinctive in these circumstances, but with drabber plumage and standing out much less, autumn individuals can usually be identified by the whitish mantle stripes, streaked  back and lack of any broad white wing bars.

The whitish mantle stripes can be seen in this shot

It’s not often that we get Red-throated Pipits in this plumage, with first winter birds in the autumn seen most often, so it was a rare opportunity to study this beautiful pipit up close. With very few twitchable mainland records in the past 10 years, this was a fantastic bird to catch up with and even better that it was so local!

Being in the area, we also popped in to Pennington Flash to catch up with one of the many Black Terns that had been grounded in the UK by the poor weather overnight, and we enjoyed distant views of this beautiful tern, the stunning smoky black plumage really standing out from the accompanying Common Tern flock. A nice Willow Tit gathering nesting material was also a nice surprise outside Teal Hide, having not seen any at the regular feeding station when we stopped by.

A trip to Meols to end the day failed to turn up the 3 Dotterel that had amazingly been showing on the beach that afternoon – a crazy sighting - but a gorgeous summer plumaged Curlew Sandpiper and flyover Grey Plover were both nice consolations!