Self-found Little Gull

 Juvenile Little Gulls are one of the more striking gull plumages and one landed in front of us at Tiscornia a week ago.  Click the link to see the flight shots and learn about the identification!

Thayer's Gull

 The fun gull build-up continues (surely that Mew Gull is just around the corner, right???).  A young Thayer's Gull flew in to a limited amount of time I had at Tiscornia yesterday.  Fortunately it landed since I was too slow to extricate the camera from the coat layers initially.

Perched it'd be easy to blow off as just another Herring Gull.  It has a small round head, and a considerably shorter bill than the Herrings though.

Here's a couple views of the Venetian blind primaries.

And while Thayer's is fairly Herring-like on top, it's still a white-wing (and my first one of the fall) below

Technically Thayer's is lumped in as a subspecies of Iceland Gull in current taxonomy, but still a fun form to see nevertheless.

Halloween Cal Gull

Well, Halloween weekend at least.  The inside of the mouth was orange-ish at any rate when it yawned.

A big rain system from the East meant there probably weren't going to be ducks flying so I figured I'd check gull flocks along the lake front.  I meant to start at Klock and work south but I drove to Tiscornia on autopilot ... where there was a darker mantled bird with a dark eye in with the Ringbilled's and Herrings.

I walked up to where I could get a decent side view.

With the side view you can see the longish bill without a big gony angle that still has some of the red proximal to the black on the bill.  This individual has more contrasting head streaking than most of the Herrings do right now.  I have trouble describing gull leg colors, but it appears to be the appropriate yellow-gray, certainly not pink.  

Here's a size comparison between Ring-billed and Herring

California doesn't have a super exciting spreadwing, but I included this pic just to show it's a full adult given it lacks dark in the wings anywhere aside from the extensively dark primaries.

We do well with California in Berrien; we see more here than the rest of the state combined.  If the MBRC page is up to date, this is the first California in Michigan since the last California Gull I found 2 years ago

Little Gull

 It's been a while since I've had a late summer Little Gull.  I got out to the beach fairly late for me and found Will and Lisa already there.  There wasn't a ton moving and when Will followed Tim out to the end of the pier I debated how long I would stay.  But about the time they got to the end a bird appeared trailing a couple Bonaparte's Gulls.  The first thought that went through my mind was, "Why does that tern have a black M on its back?"  Because it's a Little Gull.

I jogged out to the end.

It's a juvie that's still in pretty fresh plumage.  It hugged the river water's edge and we hoped it would come in closer as the wind started shifting the river water closer to the pier but the boat traffic  dispersed the birds.

One montage of the bird showing off that dorsal black M.

Iceland arrives here

 It's been a few years since I've seen an Iceland Gull so I was pretty excited to see that the 1st winter whitewing on the south pier had a dark bill.  It played hide and seek for a while as it rested offshore, but eventually headed in to the beach.

Where he displayed some manners that, well, I'm not sure I want to go to Iceland...

Is everyone from Iceland that mean?

Pretty enough though as it cycled around off the beach.

The bird overall was pretty pale, in life it looked lighter than these pics, but there's a little bit of dark pigment on the dorsal secondaries.

I'm glad we don't have to separate them from Thayer's anymore since this one certainly isn't the lightest Kumlien's.  I don't know how much variation there is on the east coast or if this one would get thrown in the intermediate zone based on the darkness in the secondaries.

Where the Crawdads Sing

 I recently read Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens.  It has a lot to say about how trust can overcome the seeming juxtaposition between not losing independence but maintaining a relationship.  It's set in 1970's coastal North Carolina, and the author (a zoologist) uses a lot nature in the book's imagery and setting, and does it in a way that generally rings true.  It's one of the better books that I've read and I'd definitely recommend it.  

What's the connection between the book and today's pics?  In the book the main character enjoys feeding her resident herring gulls and a couple times the author describes the young herring gulls pecking the red spot on the gony angle of the adults to induce them to cough up some fish.  This morning at Tiscornia there was an adult with not one but two juvies working away at this process.

It would start with the youngsters sidling up giving begging calls with heads lowered.

They would then basically start fencing, not jabbing at the red spot, but seemed to be trying to rub the underside of the adult's bill with the upperside of their bill.

They could get pretty exuberant at times.

Eventually this would sometimes culminate in the adult yakking up some fish bits...

... and cue the squabbling.

Sometimes instead of dropping the fish bits right there for the young it would fly around with them.  I'm guessing it was trying to encourage the young to chase after it, but interestingly none of the other gulls on the beach messed with trying to take the fish away.

Part of the reason for that is probably that the adult was being pretty aggressive towards any gulls that showed an interest in the proceedings.

This second year bird was drawing its ire a fair bit by wandering over.

It got chased away repeatedly.

After a while the adult starting swimming out in the water, for all the world looking like a mama duck with a brood of ducklings.  I got the sense it could swim faster than the young birds and swam out for a break from them.

It'd always fly back in without going very far though.

Eventually the process was repeated enough to be down to stomach juices.

Mmmm, stomach juices.

On that note, there you have it, 15 pics of Herring Gulls.

Black white (and red) 2020

I'd like to say I'm confident that my content will increase in the New Year, but it feels like I've made that resolution before...

The first decent bird seen in 2020 was the last decent bird of 2019, a Northern Shrike that Mindy found on the Coloma CBC.  The pic leaves a little to be desired, but hey, they're tough to find here.

This Great Black-backed adult has been hanging out along Silver and Tiscornia much of the week, this was the first time I've seen it on the beach.  I forgot to thumbwheel down to try not to completely blow out the whites on the head and it flew just about immediately.

This Blue Goose is backlit enough it could be black and white too!

Finally a couple pics of a pair of Red Foxes that crossed the road as I headed away from Tiscornia

California Gray

Yesterday, the first day after a front had come through, saw 4 digits worth of ducks go by Tiscornia.  This morning ... there were less.  Probably in the order of about 10%.  Gulls were moving well yesterday and the group were watching for Franklins in addition to sorting through the ducks ... but the only Franklin's turned up in New Buff.  When it was re-seen this morning we decided to bail on Tiscornia and look for the Franklins.  I figured best to check Silver just to make sure there wasn't a Franklin's a mile away without driving to the other side of the county.

There indeed was a darker mantle present ... but only one shade darker than the ring-billeds.

 The dark eye and mantle had me jogging back to the car for the scope and camera.  Sure enough, the long red-and-black ornamented bill, yellow-green legs, and fully dark eye of a California Gull popped out.  It looked to be an adult well on its way to winter plumage with heavier nape markings than our local rat gulls typically display.

When I moved to Berrien in 2006 there were just over a dozen records for Cal Gull in Michigan.  There's triple that number now, and three quarters of those have been here in Berrien.

Unfortunately there was no Franklin's Gull in New Buff, but Mike Bourdon found a fun consolation prize in a Cattle Egret.  I've actually seen Cal Gull more often than Cattle Egret in Berrien

Bonaparte's gone fishin'

It's Labor Day weekend, so time to take time off and relax right?  Some fresh juvie Bonaparte's Gulls have joined the fishermen on the pier and at times are foraging fairly close.  They fly a few feet above the surface, side-slipping at times to dip into the water, frequently plunging their entire heads and necks below the surface taking back off.

It was hard to tell if they were catching anything with the naked eye (or with bins) though some prominent crops were suggestive of success.  Freezing the birds with the camera revealed they were being successful about a quarter or a third of the time.

Finally a fall pic that probably won't fit well elsewhere, a Song Sparrow in some smartweed...

the flight of a thrasher's life

Imagine yourself as a Brown Thrasher, placidly enjoying a tail wind as you migrate north on an April night; what could you be thinking about?  Would you consider unique themes and variations upon the Song Sparrow and Towhee vocalizations you'd absorbed on the way north?  Maybe reprise a Wood Thrush phrase from last year?  Get ready to show off a unique piece-de-resistance like the White-breasted Wood-Wren you learned in the tropics?  (I swear I heard one mimic that sound this morning at Floral).

Would you have an odd sense of disquiet as dawn slowly broke ... but no song emanated from the oddly blue substrate below?  Nothing to sample, nothing to mimic?  With mounting panic you'd turn around and fly for shore.  How would you feel in that warm morning light?  Every morning of every week of every month of your (imminently close to infinitely shortening) life you'd welcomed the dawn with a couple hundred of your 9000 songs to be sung.  This morning, however, it's lighting you up in cream and near-crimson, contrasting you against the cold grays and blues of the water below.

And your flight will not go unnoticed.

Seven sets of eyes marked your flight.  Four atop the dune were a combo of brown, hazel, and blue, and they would passively watch; some rooting for (and some against) your escape.  Three sets of yellow would actively seek your death, shrieking all the while, as they attempted to cut you off from the sheltering trees and force you into the water, and ultimately swallow you whole. 

I thought the thrasher was done for.  After a couple passes by the gulls it dipped down to the surface, its tail touching the water, its legs searching for purchase.  Most passerines forced into the water will never rise from it, but this bird did.  I know that OH SHIT jolt of adrenaline (I remember headlights suddenly materializing before me, a fraction of a second before the impact of my car crash last winter).  Perhaps a similar jolt when it found that water wasn't shelter from the screaming gulls bearing down allowed it to get airborne again, somehow dodge 2 of the 3 back-to-back, fade the 3rd a few seconds later and frantically get back to land. 

The bird's bill was open on half my pics.  Could it have been singing the whole time as the gulls howled like wolves?  More likely it was desperately trying to oxygenate muscles strained to the breaking point.  But could it have learned a new song?  Is somewhere a thrasher composing a horror story ballad of screaming gulls and crashing waves?  Let me know if you hear it.  I'd like to think that subconsciously it is.

Leucistic Herring Gull (I think)

Tim and I had this odd gull at Tiscornia while checking the flock for Mew Gulls yesterday.  At first glance I thought it was the first Glaucous of the year, but it was actually too white ... but had some dark primaries.  Ultimately we settled on it likely being a Herring Gull missing some pigment

It has an adult bill, and an adult Glaucous (or Iceland) would have a light gray mantle.  It also has the triangular head of a Herring rather than the heavy-jawed rounder head of a Glaucous.  The eyering is orange.

As it takes off it looks like the secondaries are fairly normal, but the primaries have markedly reduced both gray and black pigment, and there's some rows of secondary coverts that are basically white

A view of the underwing shows it's molting its primaries; P10 probably isn't visible from above.

P9, P8, and P7 look therefore to have dark pigmentation.  I'm assuming the piebald mantle and wing coverts argue for a pigmentation rather than a hybridization cause, though the markedly reduced number of primaries with dark ends might be a point in the hybrid column.