Mediterranean Gull #48 / Black Headed Gull #49

How nice of the weather to cooperate on my birthday :) 
We had a fabulous day starting with a trip to WWT Martin Mere. We arrived soon after opening in bright sunshine and over the next 3 hours did all of the hides apart from the new one and saw 52 species of bird which I think is a record for us. The butterflies were also out in force and we spotted 7 different varieties, 5 from the kingfisher hide alone. 
We spent ages watching the Mediterranean Gull pair on the raft defending their space against the Black Headed Gulls. At first sight, all the birds in the main blip look to be the same, but on closer inspection you can see that there are two Med gulls with much darker heads and slightly redder beaks. The Black Headed gulls are mostly chocolate headed and were making a lot of noise and dive bombing the Med gulls. Since this is the only pair of Med gulls that we could see in the middle of over 1100 Black Headed Gulls, I hope that they leave them be and let them get on with breeding. 

We then went to a nearby pub, the Farmer's Arms in Burscough and had a lovely birthday meal - scallops, mussels and lemon posset - yum! 

On the way home, we dropped in at RSPB Marshside to see if the Black Winged Stilt that has been there the past few days, was still around. After checking with the guys at the main hide, we were directed to the screen at Faircloughs and after being very excited to see our first cattle egret of the year(extra), we were joined by a couple of the RSPB volunteers who set up their scope and found the Stilt. We would never have found it by ourselves as we only carry binoculars, but they allowed us to look through their scope and we had a reasonable view of it. Nice to see in the UK, although I'm certain we've seen them on our travels somewhere before.  Within 5 minutes it had disappeared, so we were quite lucky to have seen it I guess. A nice end to the day.