Nature Calls: The Sabine’s gull is a rare Arctic visitor that doesn’t shy away

Each week Metro flees the city in search of birds. And sometimes other things. This week, it’s the… Sabine’s gull.

Some birds are harder than others. Not as in tougher – just more difficult to see.

Warblers are a good example – small things not too far from the colour of leaves that spend most of their time hopping about among things that are actually leaves.

Seabirds also, that pass by miles out from shore and dip in and out of sight behind waves. Or the water rail – cousin of the coot – which creeps unseen among the reeds or the bittern, a master of disguise.

Then there is the other end of the scale – birds that are just there. Easy. No trouble at all. Sometimes these birds can be rare birds, which makes their ease all the more remarkable.

And that’s what we’re looking at here. A rare Arctic visitor that should be on its way to the warm waters off south-eastern Africa rather than walking around in the grass next to the car park in Kent.

It’s a juvenile Sabine’s gull and the first one we’ve ever seen.

It’s a small gull, much smaller than those seaside punks, herring gulls, and smaller even than the black-headed gulls that can be seen in most town and city parks.

While the adults have a very smart black hood, the juvenile’s head is a smoky grey that comes down towards its black eye, down its neck on to its back and wings.

In flight, that grey extends down from across the shoulders to form a triangle at the base of the tail.

Each wing is made up a white triangle and a dark one, together forming a W shape that looks less like a plumage than a team shirt, ice hockey perhaps. Or maybe the paintjob of a stunt plane.

This one here was first reported here at the entrance to Lympne Safari Park two weeks ago and has been here every day since.

We arrive wondering if it will still be there and if it is how difficult it will be to pick out from the black-headed gulls it’s been hanging around with.

We needn’t have worried. It’s just there. Right next to the track, no more than 20ft away, pecking worms from the grass and evidently unconcerned by the two men laying down pointing long-lens cameras at it. They’re so close they could almost reach out and pet it.

In birdwatching circles the terminology here would be of the bird ‘showing well’ of being ‘confiding’ or ‘obliging’ and offering ‘crippling views’ – much of which implies a performative attitude on behalf of the subject, the unpacking of which we shall not attempt here.

Up this close it’s possible to appreciate the scaly patterning on the wings caused by the darker feather edges, of how the grey on its hood is almost like a felty pelt.

Its call is like a squeak, often delivered from a hunch with the head bent down to grass level and aimed at a black-headed gull that appears to have come too close.

Should the squeak not work it takes to flight to chase the black-headed away, showing that near-perfect symmetry underlined and a black band at the end of a slightly forked tail.

It seems buoyant, only the slightest wingbeats needed to keep it airborne.

Just a handful of these birds are seen in Britain in each year and here it is flying around like a model aeroplane at eye level.

We leave after half an hour. It’s doubtful we shall ever see another Sabine’s gull so closely. The next day it has gone.

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