On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 17:47 -0500, Jeff Shenot wrote:
> Yikes!  Has anyone looked for this any further?

I wasn't going to go public but since there are already two reports in
this forum of Gyrfalcons in Maryland this winter, I may as well add
mine.

I saw a Gyrfalcon exactly one month ago today (Sunday, January 24,
2010).  I first saw it flying directly away from me.  Low over a field.
And no, I wasn't up north; I was sitting in my car on the shoulder of
Powder Mill Road, Beltsville, Prince George's County, Maryland.

This was my first free-flying Gyr.  It appeared too big and was flapping
too slowly to be one of our expected falcons.  I didn't have much to go
on thanks to the poor viewing angle; just the pointy wings and overall
snowy color.  Yes, this was a white-morph bird.  I started by trying to
make it into an Iceland Gull although in hindsight Glaucous may be a
somewhat better-fitting mistake.  It took me several seconds but I did
switch to the correct ID even though it seemed completely implausible.
My conversion was helped by Lynette Fullerton repeating, "It's a falcon.
It's a falcon..."  When the falcon banked, just before landing on the
ground under a tree at the far side of the field, I got a good look at
it from above and the identification options dropped sharply.

Now that I was confident it was a large, light falcon, I began thinking
about hybrids.  Hybrids are not common in the wild but are more common
with falconers.  And although I didn't see jesses, this bird was indeed
being flown by a falconer.  He seemingly appeared out of nowhere, picked
up the bird and took it back to his car.  I was simultaneously dejected
at loosing a good county bird and overjoyed that I wouldn't get nagged
by Phil Davis. ;-)  Doug Bolt, the third person I was with at the time,
hurried over, talked to the falconer, confirmed the ID and took a number
of up-close photos.

So even if a falcon is a falcon and isn't one of the expected three,
there are at least two more hurdles before it can confidently be called
a wild Gyrfalcon.  One more piece of identification trivia that Jeff
didn't mention; at point-blank range, it should be possible to separate
a Gyrfalcon from a Goshawk by the shape of its nostril -- round versus
triangular.

Dave
-- 
David Mozurkewich
Seabrook, PG MD