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Re: gulls return

From:

Jeff Shenot

Reply-To:

Jeff Shenot

Date:

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:49:26 -0500

I meant to post this Sunday, but was not home all day and been too busy since then.  This weekend the gulls returned to Jug Bay as well, after a two week absence from here except for a few hundred gulls.  On Friday afternoon when I got home I noticed many gulls at Jug Bay (I mentioned this in a post on Sat; there were ~ 1550 Ringers and 890 Herrings; almost all were adults).  On Sat afternoon I went out to look at about 3:45, and the gull numbers were very impressive again.  There were about 1950 Ringers, 810 Herrings, plus 2 Great Black-backeds and an Iceland Gull.  I got through them scanning carefully only once, before they all got up and left (~4:00).  Usually if they get disrupted they settle back down, but this time most of them did not.  It normally pays to scan through the gull flock repeatedly, since often a bird can get blocked from view by other birds and scanning multiple times may produce different results.  Some gulls went toward Upper Marlboro (Schoolhouse Pond and the landfill), and some went toward the Bay (mainstem Chesapeake).  The Iceland gull was puzzling; it was exceptionally pale, with plumage on the extreme end of pale (very white).  It's bill was mostly black, but with my scope I could see the beginnings (trace) of a bicolor at its base.  I don't know, maybe it was transitioning into its first summer plumage etc.?

Cheers!
Jeff Shenot
Croom Md