Even colder...

Last night was very very cold.. about -10 in places and the sea has frozen again. The reason it was so cold was that it was clear last night and that weather continued through most of the day to create a fantastic winters day with amazing light. I used my lunch hour to visit the local gulls and they were looking very forlorn.. The usual gang of Black-headed Gulls was in attendance along with 15+ Herring Gulls. One of the new residents was "KV71" a colour-ringed Herring Gull. Initial research suggests that this bird was ringed in Russia. I have reported it and hopefully I will find out soon where it was originally ringed and where it has been since... The other highlight was another yellow-legged Herring Gull which I thought initially might be a michahellis Yellow-legged Gull. It had an elongated appearance with an apparently relatively dark mantle and, a clean white head and, of course, yellow legs. However, the orbital ring around the eye is yellowish (it should be red on a Yellow-legged Gull) and the wing pattern is wrong (it has quite a large 'mirror' on P9 and a broken black sub-terminal band on P5) and the legs are not long enough. So this is another yellow-legged Herring Gull (reasonably frequent in the Baltic).

Photos: KV71 from Russia; and the yellow-legged Herring Gull