Dear All

Frank Hawkins and I thought we would do a quick whip round Hains Pt DC in 
our lunch hour so headed down there at 12.30 in our office clothing only to 
find that, as Gail mentioned, the roads were closed with lots of standing 
water.  Slightly disappointed we hopped out of the car for 'just a quick' look.  
One and half hours later we returned to the car two very soggy but happy 
birders.

As Gail said there was a single Blownaparts Gull in with the ringers on the pool 
before the club house but we cut in through the golf course and tacked round 
the back of the car park and immediately picked up the Franklin's Gull where 
Gail and Barry had left it (not that we knew that at the time...).  At a distance 
we concluded that it was a 2nd summer based on the apparent lack of white 
tertial crescents, brownish looking tertials and a very ragged set of primaries.  
But closer up we concluded that it was just a funny moulting adult - which 
certainly tallied with the nice hood, white eye lids, bright soft part colours 
etc.  Close up it did show very thin worn white, wet and ragged tertial 
crescents and the other unmoulted wet tertials looked a dirty blackish brown.  
The primaries were heavily work with a lots of dirty white tips and much 
reduced black sections, with a single moulted-in fresh outermost primary.  I am 
not sure of the moult sequence of Franklin's Gull but this seems a bit odd.  
Anyway it looked quite different from the first bird that Paul found (although I 
only saw that in flight).  

There were lots of other birds around with the following of note:
Solitary Sand (6), Spotted Sand (3), Orchard Oriole (2), Baltimore Oriole (4), 
Yellow Warbler (1), Blackpoll (1), White-crowned Sparrow (1), Savannah 
Sparrow (2), Chipping Sparrow (1). 

We bumped in to Mike Bowen on the way out so he may well give an update 
on the Franklin's Gull III later today.

We left via the river side of the point and were pleased to find two Bank 
Swallows feeding with the many hirundines around the railway bridge (incl 3+ 
Rough wings).

Excellent.

Gary Allport