Taimyr Gull: 1CY again

I recently posted on a couple of 1CY Taimyr Gulls and last week I was surprised to run into one of those two gulls again, 23 km south as the gull flies.


I mentioned on that occasion that some juveniles are greyer and others browner and posted images of a very large first winter bird and an overall grey juvenile. Last week the very large first winter was teamed up with a browner juvenile so I'm going to post more images of the large bird along with some of the browner juvenile. Starting with the large gull again...

Before the early morning sun hit the beach.

Later in the morning with a little sun on its back.

With Slaty-backs.

Another early shot, showing the spread wing.

In the sun again (with a Vega).

This is the browner bird...

An attractive, nicely proportioned gull to my eyes.



With Slaty-backed.

Leaving the Taimyrs, there was also an adult Glaucous Gull near by. Other people were trying to photograph it so I contented myself with this more distant shot. Glaucous is more common in Mie than round the Kii Peninsula in Osaka but it's still a very good bird locally.

A heavily cropped shot of an adult Glauc with Vega.

After a nice start to the day my mobile packed up and I decided to cut birding short and return to Kyoto to sort the problem out. On the way back I fell foul of a police trap to catch motorists overtaking in a safe, but nevertheless illegal, spot. Hmmmm, December is one of the months they have 'campaigns' to meet their quotas... bang goes my 'gold' license. They needed my phone number so I gave them my mobile and told them if they could get it to work they could have the number, otherwise tough. They didn't succeed which was a pity because I could have gone back to birding, but they congratulated me on my birthday which was the date the 9000 yen fine had to be paid by. Thanks guys.