Looking Back: Albert Village Lake

This time in lockdown has given me a chance to look through old records, old trips and visits to sites when I was back at school. Albert Village Lake being one of them.
Gull watching is something I've always found tricky, and throughout my time at school, Albert Village was my local gull-watching site.
This area feels quite under-watched (there haven't been any reports on BirdGuides in a year or so) and it's a site that I intend to go back to and watch more often once the lockdown is lifted.

I spent several winters watching the lake and saw a huge range of scarce gulls, including very regular Caspian Gulls. I don't know what the current status of the site is, having not been in several months, but as far as I can tell there has been little to no mention of it online as the great gull-watching site that it is.

Gulls can be tricky. They can be unpredictable to find in numbers away from their roosts and can often be difficult to see well as they congregate in restricted tips and landfill sites. I've always been keen to try and get better at identifying them and I feel like there are always new things to learn.

Moreover, with species continuing to be split and lumped, it's a continually changing taxonomy which is tricky to keep on top of.

To try to get better at my gull identification, I spent more and more time at Albert Village Lake. This site in southern Derbyshire was very close to home and hosted a huge number of gulls throughout the year.

The lake can be quite good for raptors too because of the wide views, this Kestrel was taken in 2017

Gulls commute throughout the day between the lake itself and Veolia Landfill east of Moira Road. One of the best things is that the birds are present here throughout the day - this is not a roost site (they tend to roost at nearby Foremark Reservoir) and not a site that is good in winter only.

It is possible to view Veolia Landfill reasonably well from the public rights of way east of Reservoir Hill but I haven't found this to be necessary.

Instead, I park in Albert Village Lake car park SW of the village, on Occupation Road and watch the lake itself. From here it is a short walk to the lake where the raised circuitous footpath offers extensive views across the entire lake from anywhere. Choose the best point along the footpath for the location of the sun. I have found all times of day to be productive, but particularly early afternoon. Note that birds depart to roost at Foremark Reservoir in the evenings.

Gulls come and go from the lake relatively frequently, offering a continually changing variety of gulls. If a certain gull isn't present when you arrive it probably won't be long before it flies over from the tip.

In several winters of watching the lake I have seen Glaucous Gull, Iceland Gull, Caspian Gull, Yellow-Legged Gull and Mediterranean Gull many times, along with all the common species. 10 species of regularly occurring gull is not bad for a Midlands site!

Caspian Gulls in particular are incredibly reliable (even several years ago when this was a scarcer species). I have rarely been on a winter visit to the lake and not seen at least one of these birds. Usually several are present.

Mediterranean Gull are almost always on offer for anyone with the patience to check through the many Black-Headed Gulls which dominate the lake.

Yellow-legged Gulls are more regular than Caspian Gull (especially in late summer as is traditional for this species) but they offer an identification challenge because their legs are always concealed as they rest on the water. I found this a good way of stopping me from relying on the leg colour as the initial indicator and using other, more diagnostic, features instead.

Glaucous and Iceland Gulls (while the former is more regular) were present almost every winter and usually there were several of each over the course of the winter months.

Record shot of an Iceland Gull

These two British Birds articles contain all of the finer details of Yellow-Legged Gull and Caspian Gull identification. For a shorter article try Birdguide's Focus on: Yellow-Legged Gulls and Caspian Gulls in summer. I found these latter two articles particularly helpful because I have found summer a particularly hard time to identify these species, adults especially.
Nils Van Duivendijk's Advanced Bird ID Guide is a great book for highlighting details that other field guides don't go into. I found this guide really helpful when I was improving my gull ID.

A presumed Baltic Gull, Little Gull, regular Kittiwakes and in the past, a Manx Shearwater and a Mew Gull were found on the lake! So anything really is possible!

As well as gulls, I've seen Black-throated Diver, Hobby and 9 species of warbler at the lake and it has hosted a Great Reed Warbler!

I hope nothing has fundamentally changed in the numbers of gulls to explain the lack of records recently, perhaps just a lack of people are watching it recently. If any reader has been more recently than I have, I'd love to know how the lake has been this winter. I definitely plan to go back soon to brush up on my gull identification and see what might turn up.