Caspian gull - G.O Sars, Feb 6th

What a massive surprise this bird was! It first appeared circling round the boat when we were mid survey - and appeared three times before disappearing (presumably into the melee behind the boat) for a few hours. It was incredibly striking in flight, but I wasn't convinced I had enough to nail an ID of such an off the radar spp. That set up a pretty tense few hours where we continued to survey but in reality all I wanted to do was look off the back of the boat! Fortunately it was still present when we stopped to trawl, and eventually it did the very decent thing and landed on the vessel.

It's been claimed as a first for Shetland - which is a little strange as it was at least 100 miles off Shetland (I think - must check though). It was definitely in Scottish waters though, which means it's a bit of a mega.

Doing a little digging, there are 4 records accepted between 2006 and 2009 (see here) and a further 3 reported to Birdguides after that - although 1 of those was only reported as a probable. That means that my bird is likely to be at the very most the 7th record for Scotland. I'll have that! Obviously it an SBRC rare, so here are the annotated pics that were submitted with the description.