Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 23:40:59 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: Re: Lesser B-B Gull in Allegany Co. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ray, Congratulations. Your Lesser Black-backed (nice video grabs!) is not only the first for Allegany County but the first ever for western Maryland! In fact, it is pretty much the only good gull ever seen west of Frederick County, with the exception of Laughing Gull at Rocky Gap in May 2000 seen by Michael O'Brien (2 othert "Laughings" in Allegany may not have eliminated the possibly more likely Franklin's. I actually would have picked Lesser BB as the most likely gull west of Frederick County after 1) Ring-billed 2) Bonaparte's 3) Herring. or fun, my pick for 5th-10th gull species in Allegany are as follows: 5) Sabine's Gull 6) Black-legged Kittiwake 7) Franklin's Gull 8) Little Gull 9) Great Black-backed Gull 10) Glaucous Gull Number 5 above is way ahead of the others as next most likely...sure to happen someday soon. Amazingly, Great Black-backed Gull hasn't even occurred west of Frederick County, except for an undocumented report from the Potomac River several years ago. Way to go...the MD/DC Records Committee DOES review Lesser Black-backed in Allegany County, and your photos should seal the deal. Best, Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com > Hi MD, > > This morning I found an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull in the Potomac River > at the Terminus of the C&O Canal in Cumberland. Also present were about a > dozen Ring-billed Gulls and an immature Herring Gull providing great > comparisons. Jim Paulus and Teresa Simons arrived in time to also see the > bird. Jim took photos and I took several digiscope images. One is on my > website at http://www.hereintown.net/~rrkiddy/LBBG031802-1.jpg > The bird may represent a first county record. It was not relocated at noon > or this evening. J.B. Churchill and I plan to check for it again in the > morning. > > Happy trails .... > > Ray Kiddy > Cumberland, Allegany Co., MD > rrkiddy@hereintown.net > http://www.hereintown.net/~rrkiddy/Kiddy.htm > Best, Marshall Iliff *********************** Marshall Iliff miliff@aol.com Annapolis, MD ************************ ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================