Mystery solved

Yes indeedy, although the patch has been largely dead for the first couple of months of 2024, the lake finally turned up the goods!

The weekend before last I was checking the lake and briefly glimpsed a bird in flight that I couldn't nail. The nearest I got was possible ross's gull. But thats the sort of bird news that you really don't want to be putting out so I convinced myself it must have been a funny med gull.

Fast forward a week, and I was checking the lake again and saw a bird on the shore that again I couldn't identify. This time, I was leaning more towards forster's tern but it didn't really add up. So I drove down the road for a closer look. It wasn't there. Went back home and scanned again from the Majik Patio (tm). There it was again, with a handful of black-headed gulls, with which it was a comparable size, though different jizz. Back down the road but it wasn't there. Again.

Then I saw it flying around - it was a tern and looked all light grey above - the wings, mantle, rump and tail were all the same shade of light grey, with white around the sides of the neck and a slight mask behind the eye. It landed, and I could see the legs were dark and the bill was chunky and dagger-shaped and all-black. By the process of elimination based on its size and features, it gradually dawned on me that it had to be an adult winter gull-billed tern. Result! Although, sadly not a patch tick, having had one in the same place back in July 2023.

The bird flew up to a nearby ploughed field and hawked around a bit before returning to the lake, always remaining pretty distant and I wasn't able to get anything better than piss-poor record shots. Luckily Old Spoons jammed into it nice and close flying from the ploughed field back to the lake the following day....

Cracker!

the gull-billed tern yesterday

My first contender for New Old Snowy for 2024 too - all good!