Car birding at Dozmary and Colliford

Over the last week I have been snowed in with work, 2 Nuthatches and some Siskins at Ladock and a Woodcock at Stenalee's whilst I have been out and about in the car being my only sightings...

Today was my chance to get out birding but I didn't really feel like it, it was so cold out and the strong north wind with heavy rain did little to tempt me into getting up early! However by 3pm I had itchy feet and decided to bomb up the A30 to Colliford and check out the gull roost . The great thing about Colliford is that you can be really lazy if you want to be and I was not about to get out of the car today! 

I drove down to Dozmary Pool first and was greeted with a small flock of diving ducks: 1 female Goldeneye ( my first of the autumn ) , 6 Pochard and 5 Tufted Duck. Further scanning resulted in a nice female Pintail ( scarce here) and an interesting female Aythya duck that I didn't fully sort out. It was feeding some distance away on it's own  but some features reminded me a little of a 1st Winter female Lesser Scaup. The peaked head shape with no apparent tuft, greyish flanks , small nail on the bill and narrow white blaze around the bill looked positive with the spikey tail feathers ageing it as a first winter. However time was ticking ,the light was going and the rain was frustrating me so for now I have let it go, I will take my time with it and I'll nip up on Saturday after the CBPWS bird report meeting and sort it out if it's still there... 

Colliford itself was o.k , plenty of gulls to look through but they were not really congregating at any particular part of the lake to roost so it made checking them difficult , I could have done with some birding help! ( I'll drag Pete along next time.. ) . Still I had 2 Yellow legged Gulls; an adult and a second winter along with a 1st winter Common Gull and the hundreds of Lesser black-backed Gull's, Black headed Gulls and Herring Gulls made a nice spectacle.

2nd Winter Yellow-legged Gull