CHARADRIIFORMES: Laridae
Leucophaeus pipixcan
Reports on Birdline Victoria of a Franklin's Gull at Paynesville determined the direction in which our Melbourne Cup Weekend birding-trip would head.
We spent a couple of hours looking for the gull before it turned up at the main spot where it had been reported several times during the previous week.
We enjoyed this rare visitor to Australia for a full hour and I took many photographs. And then we left it watching peacefully out over the water while we went off to get our feed of fish the easy way, at a Paynesville fish and chip shop.