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

more Western warbs

While Pink-headed Warbler was the star of the piney Chiapan mountain, there were a bunch of wintering warblers.  Lisa spotted what would have been bird of the day on most days when she announced she'd just photographed a Golden-cheeked Warbler.  Fortunately the bird popped back out.

I knew the bird was possible (actually all of the yellow cheeked warblers were possible on this trip, and this was the 3rd one we'd seen), but given it's rarity I didn't expect to find one.  And technically I didn't! But Lisa did.

Next up, another "yellow-cheeked" warbler, a male Townsend's, a bird I'd also only seen a couple of times.

The Townsend's prefer the humid rainforest of the Pacific coast, but the next two are birds of the arid southwest that I've only seen once apiece in the Chiricahua mountains in SE Arizona.

Finally an honorary warbler (though the kinglets might try to claim it too), Hutton's Vireo.

the coolest warbler

 no better way to ring in a return to blogging!  Not sure why I've been so remiss lately.

But we return to Mexico, this time to the most southeastern state of Chiapas.  We only had 2 days of birding there, but our first full day was in a gorgeous high elevation pine forest.  Warblers were abundant, and the star here was Pink-headed.  It didn't take us long to find a few.

I've never seen a bird patterned quite like this one.  Red is a hard color to capture with a camera and the pics leave a little something to be desired, but it was a really impressive bird.