However it was a glorious evening on the Range coast and for the first time I watched a merlin (this one a brown female, different to the greyish male two nights ago) mobbing a passing hobby flying towards St Govan's Head - both species causing real pandemonium among a flock of c. 25 swallows. I can't recall ever seeing these two species in the same field of view before, and I was without my camera to try and capture the event. It also reminded me of when we were in Humberside a couple of weeks ago, walking a farmland footpath. A hobby came right over us there - in brilliant evening sunlight - and again no camera with us to record the event!
As I watched this evenings hobby, and thinking more about our recent Humberside experience, it reminded me of our recent delightful sightings of little gulls over in the east at Hornsea Mere. We see so few of them over here in the west but this astonishing freshwater lake regularly attracts hundreds, and sometime thousands from early summer onwards.
We only saw somewhere in the region of 50-60 when we were briefly there but we met one of the regular gull-watchers who informed us that this summers peak count had been c. 8,200 individuals (and this was by no means a record count either!) - to us this was quite amazing!
They seem to come to feed and rest at the lake. The theory (apparently) being that the freshwater is just the right water quality and temperature to support particular invertebrate prey they are attracted too, so we were told.
These gulls seemed to be generally unfazed by large numbers of people in boats, numerous dog-walkers etc. The birds regularly rested on boat jetties (in between various periods of boat hire launches etc).
For anyone wanting more experience of this delightful gull species, with some potentially really very close views of them in various plumage stages, to us it seemed an excellent place to visit!
