6th April. Thayer's Gull

With the cold weather well and truly back I had planned on making this a weekend of jobs around the house. Having spent just an hour yesterday at Orgreave and seeing just a solitary Wheatear I opted to stay in bed this morning.  I planned on finishing the plumbing job that I was halfway through then heading over to Lincolnshire for the Thayer's Gull around midday. Halfway through draining down the central heating Roy, rang offering me a lift that I declined.  It must have been the fumes off the flux that was affecting my brain, this was lift to a lifer that was only 40 minutes away and with the Gull Guru giving us a free sample I changed my mind and rang Roy back. Things with Roy have a habit of not going to plan and after a diversion to collect Ray (Ratty) Platts we finally hit the M18 some 30 minutes later. I was conscious of the fact that this bird never seemed to stay in the same place for very long and I honestly didn't expect to see it, so when we arrived to see birders running for their cars we just followed the crowd, right to where our target sat posing for a good twenty minutes or so.  I can't pretend to know much about Thayer's - I've only just joined the cult of gull watching - but it seemed to tick the few boxes of knowledge that I have got

It's no Audouin's or Great Black-head Gull, but as Roy would say "they all look the same on the list"