I’m often aware that I overlook the most ordinary of our wildlife, somehow seeing it as less interesting than the less familiar.  Sometimes I have to force myself to look afresh.  

At the weekend I again visited the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust site in Arundel. It’s feeling like a late spring at present and there we not lots of exciting birds to spot but there were many common birds - mainly gulls - around and they were making a great deal of noise and fuss.  By far the most numerous were the Black Headed Gulls; there in the hundreds.  They are really quite striking mid sized gulls and have very fine lines with plumage of pure white, pale grey and dark chocolate brown (actually not black) heads.  They are also very fast flying and quite difficult to capture in the air.  But here are a few of the shots I grabbed:

Mixed among the Black Headed Gulls were 3 or 4 Mediterranean Gulls.  If I hadn’t known these were about, I’m almost certain that I would have completely overlooked them because they are really very similar to the Black Headed.  They are a bit bigger, have a heavier beak and have a properly black head that reaches a little further down the neck.  On full adults, they are also meant to have completely white wing tips.  This is the first time that I’ve ‘officially’ seen this species.  They are reasonably uncommon in the UK but it’s quite possible that I’ve overlooked them in the past!  See if you can spot the difference:

Adult Mediterannean Gull with a 1st or 2nd year.

Possibly this Mediterranean is not quite a 3rd year adult as it still has a little black marking on the wing tips.