Sutton Bingham - Thu 10 May

A very quick stop on the way home from work tonight produced a couple of terns flying around at the northern end of the reservoir. I was convinced they were Arctic Terns but were always just a little bit too distant to absolutely nail. So after dinner I popped back to the reservoir and this time the terns were off the dam, so hot-footing it round to the Fishing Lodge I set up my scope and was able to confirm the identification as they were both rather obliging by perching on buoys. The photos below are of the bird with the paler bill, the second bird (which was more distant) had a really dark red bill that looked almost black from a distance.

Arctic Tern is not an easy bird to get on the patch year list, so this was a welcome find and also represented my 100th species of the year at Sutton Bingham.