Having telephoned Birdline from work in the early afternoon, I was astonished to hear that an adult Slender-billed Gull had turned up at Grove Ferry in Kent. The site had to be too far to reach after work and it was unlikely the bird would stay until the weekend. Vicky picked me up from the office at 5pm as usual and I decided we simply had to give it a try! By 7.30pm we had reached Canterbury and there was still a good hour of light left. A little later, we pulled up, straight on to a grass verge at high speed having spotted the gathered birders. I spotted old mate Dunc and new mate Mark Hawkes from Little Paxton. Dunc gave me a look through his scope straight away and I locked on to this most corking of rare gulls. In the evening light, the Slender-bill swam around in the company of the local Black-headed Gulls on the fresh marsh. As expected, it was very long-necked, with a curious drawn-out forehead and long thin, blood-red bill. It was slightly larger than the Black-heads and a very different shape altogether. The bird was an adult with a pinkish wash on the pure white head and breast and a white eye. After grilling this belter, the first in the UK since 1987, I picked up a drake Garganey, several Greenshank and a Bar-tailed Godwit. Not bad at all!
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