On Sunday afternoon I braved the gales and took a rather long walk from Grenoside to Broomhead Reservoir to have a squint through the gull roost. The windy conditions meant the walk down was very uneventful indeed, with pretty much the only notables being a small mixed flock of siskin and lesser redpoll in Wharncliffe Wood, although the advantage of the bird-free walk was at least I managed to get to the reservoirs at walker’s pace, rather than birder’s pace!
Passing More Hall res nothing was more notable than a quintet of cormorants, and a scan through the loafing black-headed gulls there revealed nothing of any interest. Gulls starting to drift overhead, and I got to Broomhead just after 4pm, where I joined a few birders at one of the few vantage points on the south side of the reservoir. The squinting began through the 3,000 strong flock of black-headeds, revealing a few hundred herring gulls, a smattering of great black-backed and common gulls, a single lesser black-backed, and, eventually, the adult Mediterranean Gull that had been regularly reported. Other sightings included a flypast by a dunlin, an unusual record for the site.
The picture above is, of course, a cheat, as is often the case with my gull-watching posts. It was taken at the Holbeck car park in Scarborough in February last year, where the Meds are a bit easier to find, especially if you turn up armed with a white sliced loaf!
Sheffield Wildlife 