Sunday 8th August 2022
Today was supposed to be a relaxed day, preparing for our family holiday flight tomorrow morning. Given that I had all day today to prepare I'd left packing to the today.
A mid-morning
The journey down to Graffham Water was easy and we were soon parked up in the visitor car park amongst the masses of tourists out for fun in the baking sunshine.
A short walk later and we were straight on to the bird. We stayed for around an hour then were headed back - I needed to pack.
I have to say this was an underwhelming bird and twitch. Equally I am thankful of the timing; had news broken 24 hours later I would have been cursing from Bali.
There are five subspecies of Kep Gull, which is common in the Southern Hemisphere. The first Western Palearctic record was in 1995 in Paris. This records was a real surprise given the species' range, but given there are no known birds in captivity it was clearly a genuine vagrant. There were no more records until 2013, after which records in Portugal and Spain started to become more frequent. A UK record seemed a matter of time, but no-one expected it to be midsummer in Cambridgeshire.
The Graffham bird was a brilliant inland find. Like all other European records it was of the Africa Vetula subspecies which is commonly known as 'Cape Gull'. It's a large, bulky gull with gangly green legs, a heavy and bulbous-tipped bill and very dark upperparts.
