Happy New Year! For many people, 2020 was the worst year of their lives as Covid-19 wreaked havoc with our way of life. Unfortunately, 2021 has started off in a similar vein with a lockdown imposed early in the month and infection rates and death rates higher than during the first lockdown in March to May of last year. I did get to the coast with my partner on the 2nd, primarily to do some photography and have a walk, but I managed to find a purple sandpiper and a couple of turnstones amongst the sea defences there - who knows when my next trip to the seaside will be?
Following this I restricted myself to short journeys for walks at Tyttenhanger gravel pits (tree sparrow) and Great Amwell, with both sites offering opportunities to add a variety of wildfowl, other water birds and gulls to my very slowly increasing year list. The latter site produced the only real rarity during this period in the form of at least one Caspian gull, the German-ringed individual 'X307', which has been spending a lot of its time at the Fairlands Valley Lakes in Stevenage but sometimes roosts at Amwell. Although this bird is apparently a hybrid (with herring gull), it was accompanied by a second bird that also bore all the hallmarks of a Caspian gull, in particular the large white markings on the primaries and dark grey back colour that can be seen in the image of the pair below.
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