A teenager?

The rain intensified just as I was about to go for a lunchtime walk down to the river, so I sat in the car and took photographs of the black-headed gulls that were hanging about waiting for someone to come and feed the ducks.

This is an adult black-headed gull in winter plumage. In a month or two this bird will have a chocolate coloured head (not a black one) ready for the breeding season.

I have a colleague who is a keen bird ringer. These last two winters there has been a ringed black-head on the Kent, and B has spent quite a few lunch hours trying to read the ring. He had enough details to know it was a bird ringed in Finland. Eventually, though, he managed to read the full number, and today he heard that this identifies the gull as one that was ringed as an adult in Helsinki in 2001. This means that it would have been fledged in 1999 or before, a bird of 14 years or more.

I do have photos of the ringed bird, though this isn't him.