Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 14:55:59 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Gail Mackiernan Subject: Glaucous, Thayer's Gulls etc. in DC, 2/19 Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all -- Barry, I and Sally Wechsler went down to the National Arboretum in the morning (arriving around 9 am) and then to Hains Point and the Tidal Basin in late morning, and early afternoon. At the Arboretum we stopped at the crabapples and almost immediately had 5 PURPLE FINCHES, including a beautiful male, in one of the nearest trees. They flew off but landed not too far away so may be re-findable. We also saw about 20 or so Cedar Waxwings -- recall there had been a Bohemian in this location maybe 15 years (??) ago. Worth checking. At Hickey Hill we ran into Bill Dobbins and together we all looked for the Orange-crowned Warbler and Red-breasted Nuthatches reported from earlier in the week. Bill did see the warbler for a short while, while we were about 30 yards away, but it managed to disappear so we dipped again. Will have to try again. No nuthatches, just a couple of Hermit Thrushes and a number of Towhees. At Hains Point the ice in the Washington Channel had about 300 gulls, among them a 2nd year LESSER BLACK-BACKED. There were 100s of other gulls out on the Potomac and we scoped them and located the GLAUCOUS GULL about 1/2 way across with other large gulls. It was bathing and splashing, easy enough to see. We were just going to get teh Questar on it when a Park Police came along and said we needed a permit to use a camera with tripod on park property -- he didn't seem to understand the difference between cameras and telescopes. He was perfectly nice, as were we, but we moved on rather annoyed. (I do seem to recall this rule regarding cameras -- anyone else ever run into this problem?) At the Tidal Basin, 1000s of gulls in perfect viewing conditions, on the ice and in some open water, unfortunately we couldn't stay as long as we'd have liked. However, we picked out about 5-6 Lesser BBs (from first year to adult) an also, had the THAYER'S GULL in the open water near the Swan Boat dock. Smaller than Herring Gull but larger than Ring-billed, uniform pale biscuit or (as Paul Pisano said, cafe au lait) underneath, from the top primaries brown, a bit paler than milk chocolate, and when it flapped, all silvery underneath the wing, rounded head and rather small dark bill. No hassles from police. With the warm weather predicted, the Tidal Basin ice may not last so folks should try and get down there. Gail Mackiernan and Barry Cooper Silver Spring, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================