A beautiful morning at Leeshaw with full sun and clear blue skies on a light NW>2 at an icy minus one degree. Plenty frozen puddles as well as the fringes of the reservoir.
A good count of Canadas and Greylags along with a brief sighting of the Pink Footed goose as it left with the Greylags heading for the fields at Upper Marsh.
Only other wildfowl were a single female Teal along with 6 Mallard whilst a Heron was on the far bank as well as a Cormorant. Two unusual visitors for this site were a Great and a Blue Tit.
A good collection of gulls with around 200 small gulls, 5 LBBs and around 30 Herrings. The gull pictured on the tower had characteristics of a 3CY to adult Yellow Legged Herring with pale yellow legs, though the feet were pink, and a partial face mask though heavily streaked head. The mantle was slightly darker than the photo shows due to the sun upping the exposure and the eye looked dark in the 2 minutes I had to scope it but hard to tell at the distance, hence the 1 poor photo.
Looking through Martin Garners very explicit ID of YL gulls in Britain it seems the options are,
Herring gull with lipochrome, yellowish legs, YL Herring of the race 'omissus' due to heavy head streaking, which I,ve had a probable at this site before, or hybrid YL x Herring.
Looks like we could be back to the fog and drizzle again tomorrow with a light south easterly.
BS