Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 15:36:38 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Iceland Gulls at Salisbury Landfill & other shore sightings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello all, On Saturday I did a bit of birding on MD's Eastern Shore. Nothing extraordinary, but the gulling at Salisbury Landfill was excellent. Highlights were * 2 1st winter Iceland Gulls * 1 first-winter Lesser Black-backed Gull (surprisingly the only Lesser out of 2000+ Herrings) * 1 adult mystery gull - clearly very like Herring Gull in structure and general pattern, but the back was about equivalent to a California Gull (i.e. noticeably darker and about halfway to the darkness of a Lesser Black-backed). The bird was noticeably smaller than all Herring Gulls present, but not much smaller. The legs were pinkish. I discerned no other differences from the other Herrings (size and back color were all), though there may have been slightly more black in the wingtip. I am not sure what to make of the bird...hybrid (w/ Lesser?). Any ideas? I was able to get some excellent photos. * 1 European Starling there was leucistic and looked almost entirely white in flight. At rest, it was apparent that its body was washed out below, its wings were entirely white, but that its back was almost "normal" in color. Interesting bird. Ocean City Inlet was slow, but there was at least one adult male Harlequin Duck there. There was one Palm Warbler off Rte. 90 near Ocean Pines. Elliot Island had 6+ Short-eared Owls, which is always a pleasure. Best, Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com ============ Marshall J. Iliff Annapolis, MD miliff@aol.com ============= ================================================================= To unsubscribe send a message to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ==========================================================================================================================================