A follow-up to Gail and Barry's report from Back River. I can add a Common Yellowthroat to the mix, seen after we split up. Also, my total of Laughing Gulls was 18. I should add a comment about the smaller one we saw. About a dozen years ago I measured the Laughing Gull specimens at the Smithsonian while working on comments on the identification of a Laughing/Franklin's Gull in Britain. Much of the controversy hinged on the small size of the bird. I found that the Laughing Gull breedings in the southern U.S and in the Caribbean were, on average, smaller than the birds breeding on the Atlantic Coast. In some instances the differences were striking, but they were clinal and there are no subspecies recognized. The point of the exercise was that a Laughing Gull in Britain (it was a Laugher) could have as easily come from the Caribbean (following Gulf Stream) as from the northeastern U.S. As a consequence I noticed that when I was in Brownsville in the spring that the size difference was not a great between Franklin's and Laughing as it is when I see Franklin's here. The bird we saw yesterday was notably small, but there is great individual variation in gulls and it is just as likely that this was a small bird as it is that the bird is from one of the southern colonies. It was just a bit of an eye-grabber on a day when there were (inexplicably) no Little Gulls or Black-headed Gulls we could find. Rick "Lack of education is an extraordinary handicap when one is being offensive." Josephine Tey Rick Blom rblom@blazie.com Bel Air, Maryland