Bonaparte Gull

[Mystical Potato Head]

Saw a Bonaparte Gull in non breeding plumage this morning on the shore at Thurso harbour amongst a group of other gulls,a very rare visitor that i would never have seen a had it not been for the 2 mini bus loads of twitchers.One very kindly gave me a look through his scope.

A group of very happy twitchers,sadly the bird was too far away to get a decent photograph


A very poor image,zoomed and cropped but you can just make out the distinctive black beak.

[dafi]

anyone want to hazzard a guess if it will still be about the morn?

[kas]

The last one in March/April 2008 stayed for over a fortnight and the only other record was a bird that stayed from September 2004 to March 2005.

http://forum.caithness.org/showthread.php?t=46991&highlight=bonapartes

So I hope it stays until the weekend Dafi.

Nice photos MPH and not a bad bird to start life with the new lens.

I got a call from the HArbour last night about a bunch of twenty twithchers watching a rare gull.

The only problem being it was the wrong harbour and wrong gull. This was the Iceland Gull at Scrabster.

[highland red]

Bloody typical: the first time I DON'T got to Thurso is the time that there was something rare there. Mind you we did see a beautiful Osprey on the way to Inverness.

Swings and roundabouts I suppose.

[nemosia]

Bloody typical: the first time I DON'T got to Thurso is the time that there was something rare there. Mind you we did see a beautiful Osprey on the way to Inverness.

Swings and roundabouts I suppose.

You could still see it HR. Looks as though it's hanging around. Here's a digiscope image from this morning. It was just upstream from the Ellon footbridge with black-headed gulls.