Rare gull settles in Kintyre

READER Nick Fletcher of the Argyll Hotel at Bellochantuy in Kintyre had a very unusual visitor to the beach near his hotel.

Mr Fletcher said: ‘Thought you may be interested in an unusual visitor we have to Argyll.

‘This winter we have a Glaucous gull spending quite some time on the beach at Bellochantuy Bay outside our hotel. From what I can tell, it is a fairly rare sight.’

The Glaucous gull is a large pale gull with white wing tips. Younger birds are creamy white or more biscuit- coloured, depending on age. All have pale wingtips.

It is bigger than a herring gull and bulkier, with a fiercer expression, larger beak and squarer head than the smaller but virtually identically-plumaged Iceland gull.

The gull is rare and only 170 pairs are thought to be in the UK for winter passage.