CT - A most interesting first-cycle gull - 02/18

A return trip to the Windsor Landfill produced immense numbers of gulls peaking at about 1pm with around 6,000 birds present. The first ninety minutes produced only two species (American Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls) but after 12:30 things began to pick up with a new adult Kumlien's Gull and two first-cycle Lesser Black-backed Gulls.

Just before 2pm I came across this beast! A large, rather pot-bellied first-cycle bird with a distinct frosty tone and a curious cinnamon-buff appearance to much of the upperparts. Head and bill profile looked distinctly different to most smithsonianus present with a rather flat crown, long sloping forehead, long lores and long, heavy bill.

The Ujiharas, creators of the Japanese Gull site, kindly commented that almost all the features shown by this bird could be within the range of a first-cycle Slaty-backed Gull. However, the pink based bill would only be shown by a minority of birds at this time of year and most Slaty-backed tend to show a more drooping bill. They also that felt the uniform neck pattern wasn't particularly good as most first-cycle Slatys tend to show more spotted or streaked neck sides. I'm very grateful for thier comments in any event.

Looks like a bird than might be beyond a certain identification for the time being, but it was certainly one to get the heart beating faster in the field!

unidentified first-cycle gull - compared with the American Herring Gull (left) much larger and bulkier with broad whitish tips to the tertials and greater coverts. Primaries distinctive being brown, not blackish-brown, with very neat whitish tips and narrower fringes. Pale bleached head and hind-neck with noticeable but uneven 'mask'.

unidentified first-cycle gull - not too difficult to pick out from the crowd being larger than most American Herring Gulls plus bulky with warm cinnamon-buff tones and rather even, 'velvety' underparts. Overall appearance, not unlike a huge, warm-toned Thayer's Gull.


unidentified first-cycle gull - large, bulky and distinctly frosty looking with pale hind-neck and subtly streaked lower neck.

unidentified first-cycle gull - comparison with the first-cycle American Herring Gull (left).

unidentified first-cycle gull - stout looking bill with pinkish base to both mandibles.

unidentified first-cycle gull - solid stance, pot-bellied jizz recalling Slaty-backed Gull.

unidentified first-cycle gull - first of several digibin flight shots. Rather subtle and uniform in flight, again recalling large Thayer's to some extent. Quite densely but finely barred rump. Fairly narrow secondary bar blending into inner primaries. Inner primaries forming pale but diffuse panel showing 'two-toned' effect merging gradually into outer primaries with no sharp contrast between inner and outer primaries.

unidentified first-cycle gull - Pale inner webs of primaries continuing gradually to outer most primaries showing weak 'pearls' effect. Cropped detail of the primary pattern shown below.


unidentified first-cycle gull - Pale inner webs of primaries continuing gradually to outer most primaries showing weak 'pearls' effect. Rather translucent underwing again recalling Thayer's Gull.

CT - Kumlien's Gull - dark eyed adult - 02/16

Spent another pleasant afternoon at the Windsor Landfill in Connecticut. On arrival, Nick Bonomo put me onto this fine dark-eyed adult Kumlien's Gull with mid-gray primaries which turned out to be the best bird of the afternoon for me. Typically, Nick managed to put one in the back of the net ninety seconds before full time, scoring a first-cycle Thayer's Gull just as I was having one last scan at the other side of the landfill! Nick's record of finding rare gulls at this site is most impressive.


JPS.

MA - 'Thayer's-like' Gull, Turner's Falls - 02/15

'Thayer's-like' Gull - first-cycle, Barton Cove, Turner's Falls, Franklin Co., MA. First found at 16:40hrs and then present until at least 17:30hrs.

NB. Further observations of this bird through to Feb 26th have shown that an identification of Thayer's Gull hasn't been as straight forward as I initially thought. I have since withdrawn the claim of Thayer's but keep an open mind about the identification. It's still a bird of great interest to me and at the moment I don't have particularly clear idea of what it could be in terms of a hybrid combination. I'm also still not sure sure if I'd totally rule out Thayer's altogether. Subsequent images can be seen in my update here.

Posted on Feb 15th - "How nice it was to finally find a Thayer's Gull at Turner's Falls. The bird was on the ice with a reasonably sized (c.500) late afternoon gathering of large gulls at Barton Cove. I discovered it viewing from the Unity Park side of the cove at Turner's Falls. Coincidentally, Al and Lois Richardson showed up at Unity Park and were able to share the observation. The views from Unity Park were way superior to the views we later had from Riverview Drive in Gill. In fact, the light was so bad from this spot, that it took quite a long time to relocate the bird. All of the images in this selection were taken from Unity Park, Turner's Falls looking North-west.

This was just the sort of first-cycle Thayer's that I would hope to have found at Turner's and exhibited a number of important features when compared to first-cycle American Herring Gull, many of which are now looking faded enough to cause some problems.

1) Uniformly light-tan grayish plumage with soft, velvety appearance compared to coarser patterning of American Herring Gull. Overall appearance looked light and 'frosty'.

2) In contrast, the bill looked completely black though I didn't get close enough to detect any pale at the base of the lower mandible. In mid-February, a bird with such an obviously all black bill was quite eye-catching as just about all the first-cycle American Herring Gulls that I've seen lately have shown bi-colored bills to varying degrees.

3) Broad, noticable 'mask' surrounding the eye visible only at certain angles - similar to this bird from East Gloucester last winter.

4) Tertial centers darker than the rest of the upperparts, but on this bird I thought the tertial centers were relatively light compared to some Thayer's that I've seen.

5) In contrast to the tertials, the folded primaries appeared much darker, in fact the darkest part of the plumage. The primary feathers, especially the inner primaries were very neatly and tightly fringed whitish most notably at the feather tips - a good feature for Thayer's at this time of year.

6) I only saw the bird in flight once and it roosted during most of the observation. However, it showed the clear two-toned pattern to the upper surface of the primaries (dark outer webs, pale inner webs), whilst from below the underwing looked much closer to a 'white-winged' gull with pale primaries with dark tips forming a neat, dark trailing edge. I didn't see the secondary bar and or the tail band particularly well but didn't see anything to contradict my thoughts about this being a Thayer's Gull.

7) Legs, seen in good light only once, were quite deep raspberry pink."







Other birds of note this eveing at Barton Cove; 1 male Red-breasted Merganser (distant shot below), 2 Kumlien's Gull (1st and 2nd cycle), 1 Nelson's Gull (1st cycle), 2 Lesser Black-backed Gulls (adults).

CT - SLATY-BACKED GULL - 02/13

Another superb find at the Windsor Landfill. This 2nd/3rd cycle Slaty-backed Gull was found by Patrick Dugan and Frank Mantlik on Monday and has been seen somewhat frequently throughout the week.

I spent just 90 minutes at the landfill this afternoon and was quite overwhelmed by the huge numbers present. At least 6,000 large gulls were present when I first arrived. I eventually located the Slaty-backed at around 15:10hrs and watched it depart East at 15:15hrs. Plumage wise, it was quite a different beast to the bird found by Nick Bonomo in November 2008 being clearly younger.

It seems pretty incredible that this small inland landfill now has 2 Slaty-backed and 2-3 Thayer's Gulls to its credit, all from the same winter.




Please note that all of these images have been quite strongly affected by late afternoon glare. Conditions were not ideal.

Also at Windsor Landfill today, 1 Glaucous Gull (1st cycle), 1 Kumlien's Gull (1st cycle), 1 uid Kumlien's/Thayer's (1st/2nd cycle) and 1 Lesser Black-backed Gull (adult graellsii).

On the way home I spent 45 minutes at the Holyoke (MA) gull roost viewing North from the Rt 116 bridge over the CT River just below the falls. About 1200 gulls had gathered before I decided to leave with c.700 of these being Ring-billed. Most notably, 4 Kumlien's Gulls flew into the roost, down on last weekend's count of 10 birds, although I didn't stay for the late arrivals which has often brought in most of the Kumlien's at this particular site, with a high of 13 Kumlien's Gulls on January 30th. However, eight species of gull in an afternoon in the interior Connecticut River Valley can't be bad.

Other notable birds for the day included a fly-over Common Redpoll on North Whitney Street, Amherst and another visit from a green morph Pine Siskin to our feeders in Amherst.

RI - Tufted Duck - 02/11

I can't think of a single year that I've missed seeing Tufted Duck since I began birding in 1975. Growing up in England and then spending extended periods in Israel always ensured that Tufted Duck was one of the commoner diving ducks that I'd encounter during any birding year.

Over the past couple of years I've had become increasingly aware that I've never actually seen Tufted Duck in North America, so I was especially delighted to catch up with this fine male in Rhode Island. I'd actually spent most of the morning unsuccessfully looking for this bird at Apponaug Cove in Warwick and was understandably thrilled when Rachel Farrell called to let me know that Jack Sullivan had just located a Tufted Duck on East Providence Reservoir. It took me about 30 minutes to get to the site and to find Rachel and Jack still there watching the bird. The views were distant but the light excellent offering some good instructive comparisons with Lesser Scaup and Ring-necked Ducks. I'm extremely grateful to Rachel for the call.

It's a little ironic that Tufted Duck should become the 700th species that I've seen in the ABA area!

Tufted Duck - male (center in all three images above), East Providence Reservoir, RI.

Tufted Duck - male (fourth from left), East Providence Reservoir, RI.

Tufted Duck - male (upper right), East Providence Reservoir, RI.
With Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Duck and Green-winged Teal.

A third 'green morph' Pine Siskin - 02/10

Pine Siskin - green morph (left most bird in both shots), North Whitney Street, Amherst, MA.

Pine Siskin - green morph, North Whitney Street, Amherst, MA. Poor quality digibin images taken through the glass of the deck door.

The largest concentration (60 plus) of Pine Siskins at our feeders brought another green morph, this one being greener backed than the previous two, though with far less yellow on the rump than yesterday's bird. Huge numbers Pine Siskins remain in the North Whitney Street/Redgate Lane area, and I also had another party of White-winged Crossbills on South-east Street, Amherst today.

Reports of green morph Pine Siskins seem to have been common place on several of the New England listserves over the last week or so. Rachel Farrell got some nice images of a bright bird that she had in her yard in East Providence, RI which can be seen here.

'Green' Pine Siskin - 02/09

Remarkably, in addition to the bird at our feeders on February 6th, we had an even brighter male Pine Siskin just after lunch today. This bird really did have an overall 'greenish' cast to the upperparts and a strong yellow wash on the underparts, ventral region, and surrounding the auriculars. Unlike the bird from Feb 6th, this bird had a bright yellow rump much like Eurasian Siskin along with two yellow wing bars (median coverts dull yellow compared to bright yellow greater covert bar) again vaguely resembling female Eurasian Siskin.

I'm grateful to Sheryl Johnson, David Spector, Mark Szantyr and Scott Surner for offering comments on the green morph of Pine Siskin.

'Green morph' Pine Siskin - the yellowish rump can been here.

Also over North Whitney Street today, 5 White-winged Crossbills.

Thayer's like Gull, Barton Cove, - 02/04

'Thayer's like' Gull - first-cycle (left). This bird appears in the lower left/center of each of the following images.

This first-cycle gull caught my eye when scanning through the assembling gulls at Barton Cove, Gill. I'll say from the outset that conditions weren't great. The light was beginning to go and I found the bird late with its head tucked into its upperpart feathers, a posture which it retained for most of the observation. I found it whilst searching for a Nelson's Gull when all the gulls were flushed by a raptor a few minutes earlier. When I found this bird, I initially thought I'd relocated the Nelson's due to its rather 'milky-coffee' colored plumage, frosty fringes, and brownish (not black-brown) primaries. I became increasingly interested on seeing the head and bill shape, as well as the rather light-mid brown centers to the tertials. Close inspection with the scope revealed distinct neat whitish tips and fringes to the primaries which is admittedly difficult to see in these shots but can just be made out.

In flight over the cove, even in poor light, it looked very good for Thayer's, and I could follow the bird amongst c.800 other gulls due to the near translucent appearance of the underwing and especially the tail band which looked mid-brown, narrower and lighter than in American Herring Gull.

On Feb 6th, I relocated the Nelson's along with a Glaucous, 2 Kumlien's Iceland, and 2 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, but unfortunately had no sign of this bird. Looks like I might have to let this one go as a near miss!

As always, I'd be interested in receiving comments concerning the identification.

GB,

JPS