Mediterranean Gull movement - some thoughts

 Whenever I'm fishing the RMC, between Gigger's Green and Seabrooke, if I see any birds worthy of note, I send my sightings to Ian Roberts who runs Folkestone Birds This superb website provides news of all sightings (birds, moths and anything else) of interest within the Shepway area and I'm very happy to support the cause. After getting home yesterday, unsurprisingly, I sent an email to Ian expressing my hope that others had also witnessed the westward movement of gulls, more pointedly the Mediterranean Gulls, along the escarpment. 

I didn't have to wait too long before a reply appeared - a new entry in my Google "In-box" announced by an audible alert from the laptop. Ian sent a lovely reply in which was contained some very interesting background to my experience. Ian had been out birding, the previous day, on the marsh to the south of where I was fishing. He told me of his own sighting of hundreds of Mediterranean Gulls coming in from the north, to feed on the marshland between the South Downs and the coast. Had what I witnessed been just a repeat of Ian's experience, from a different perspective? Do the Mediterranean Gulls of the, well documented, Copt Point population feed out on Romney Marsh, using the downs as a flyway to spread out over the huge area which makes up the adjacent marshes? Maybe this feeding dispersal happens every day and is just ignored/overlooked by the locals? Because I don't see Med Gulls on a regular basis, the scale of the movement yesterday just blew me away.  With a winter pike project planned for this section of the RMC I might be able to answer this question for myself!

I finish this post with the sad news that Bev's mum, Denise Bunclark, passed away, peacefully, in her sleep, overnight. As sad as this event is, we both feel a sense of relief knowing that she's no longer suffering in a state of limbo. Blogging might be sporadic, as a result, but life will go on!