Friday 17th February: Long Rock & Newlyn

Today once more the format was to do some light cottage chorage in the morning and then go on an outing in the afternoon. After a spot of sorting out a few damp patches I had to go on a shopping errand and I negotiated a brief scan of Mounts Bay as a reward. I chose Long Rock car park for my scan but there was little to see apart from a couple of great northern divers and a distant skua species (probably a pom or an arctic) that successfully chased after a gull until it gave up its lunch.

After a bit more work in the afternoon we decided to explore the Newlyn area a bit for our outing. As we set off from Pendeen along the North Road a snowy white gull flew low over the road in front of us and then flew along the road ahead of us for a while as we drove along before landing in a field alongside the road. From it's relatively small size and dainty proportions it was clearly an Iceland gull and without any grey in the wings it would have been a first or second winter, perhaps the Newlyn second winter bird.

Arriving at Newlyn, we parked up at the Tolcarne Inn and went in search of a cup of tea. This proved to be remarkably difficult as everywhere was closed though we eventually succeeded and took our drinks to the North Pier where we found a convenient bench. From this vantage point we surveyed the harbour looking at the boats and gulls though there was no sign of either the adult glaucous gull or the 2nd winter Iceland gull that had been frequenting the harbour for the last week or so. After a walk to the end of the pier and back we headed back to the car park where I met up with Graham Hobin and we scanned through the gulls together. Graham managed to spot what turned out to be a first winter glaucous gull on the rocks off Wherry Beach, perhaps the bird that had been around a couple of weeks ago in the harbour when I was last down. I couldn't hang around as the family was getting restless so we headed off back home but it had been good to score both white-wingers in one afternoon.

The 1st winter Glaucous Gull