Yesterday I participated in the Dorchester County Fall Count with Joe Eades from Missouri and Harry Armistead. Our highlight was a first-summer Franklin's Gull that Joe spotted among the 2,000+ Laughing Gulls at the hog farm on Indiantown Road south of Brookview. Fortunately the bird was front and center less than a hundred feet away allowing easy viewing and videotaping. It was the only bird with a partial hood, which the adult Laughing Gulls no longer had. It also stretched its wings showing the pattern of the first-summer plumage as illustrated on page 210 of Sibley.
--
Bob Ringler
Eldersburg MD