Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 64

SOME RARE IVORY gulls have been seen this winter along the coasts of the Shetland Islands and around the far north of Scotland. Recently one has been haunting the Black Rock Sands at Criccieth in northwest Wales. It is a pure white bird that looks something like a dove when it is standing on the sand, though when it flies it is obviously a gull. This individual has been feeding on the carcass of a porpoise on the shore.

Ivory gulls breed only in the highest Arctic, from Canada to Siberia, and normally spend the winter out on the pack ice, mixing with seals and eating their corpses when they die.

Wild rose, or dog rose, is putting out its first green shoots in the hedgerows. Some bushes also have some of last year’s shrivelled fruit still clinging to them, once red, now black.