yellow-legged gull in Hyannis, MA, err.... a gull with yellow legs

Anna and I zoomed up to Hyannis today in the horrendous weather this AM to try and see this Gull in Veterans Park on the west side of town. The weather still sucked when we got there, but the gull in question was easily found right away, hanging out with some Herring Gulls and a Ring-billed Gull. They were quite cooperative, as they seemed to be accustomed to people feeding them. They would get closer when we rolled the windows down, but that meant the nasty sleet would blow right into the car.

So, I was really hoping that this would turn out to be an easy Yellow-legged Gull, a species which normally hangs out in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Upon further inspection though, it isn't quite that easy. This bird's head is darker, and the streaks that run from the nape into the face extend down and into the breast. The mantle color seems right, but the bill to me seemed smaller than nearby Herring Gulls, which should be the other way around. The spot on the Gonys to me looked like the right size and color red, and the leg coloration seems to be right. The biggest plumage character for me that indicates that it might not be a pure Yellow-legged Gull is that it has a darker sub-terminal band on the underside of the secondaries, though I am no Gull expert and have never seen Yellow-legged Gull before.

Having said all of that, this was formally considered a subspecies of Herring Gull, and as we know, Herring Gulls can exhibit a wide array of plumage characters. Herring Gulls hybridize with Lesser Black-backed Gulls which seems to be a likely candidate for this bird given the dark sub-terminal band on the secondaries. This is a character that LBBG exhibits. Anyway, it was a fun morning, and a good gull to study, I just wish the weather had been nicer.

The Gull in the back with a nice crisp breeding plumaged Herring Gull in front for comparison.

The gull in flight, through the rain covered windshield showing the darker sub-terminal band on the underside of the secondaries.

Walking through the parking lot.

AWA Birdathon Follow Up

Well, Thursday turned out to be an amazing day, both for weather and for birds. Lucky for me, my team mate Anna Hallstrom has an amazing amount of patience and ability to forgive as our well laid plans of haranguing around the state in search of birds such as Snowy Owl, American Bittern and Great Egret were traded for my realization that I had the return ferry time wrong, and as we got a coffee at Mable's cafe the horn blew and we watched the ferry pull away and our plans crumbled to the ground.

We went back into Mable's and got some breakfast resigned to the fact that the next ferry didn't return to the mainland until 2:30 PM, so there was no way to see a lot of the birds we had planned on. As we ate, we got swept up in some of the small island cafe chatter, and the topic of birds soon came up as our scope leaned against the building near the door, identifying us as birders. This was great, as we heard talk of the giant Arctic Snow Owls that had been seen this winter, and then got some great advice as to how to spend our time best on the island seeing as many species as possible, on foot.

Block Island has only some 900 year round residents, so it kind of feels a little easier to chase a flock of birds into someone's back yard, especially when all of the shades are drawn. In one such place we saw the majority of our terrestrial species, including a singing Rusty Blackbird. We had a really nice flyover of an adult Red-shouldered Hawk by the airport, but failed to see a few of the island's potential specialties. One of the most fun occurrences happened as I watched a crow overhead, and Anna saw a male Ring-necked Pheasant cruise across our path. I had gone all of 2011 without seeing a Pheasant, so I was a little jealous, but we decided we could count it for the birdathon anyway. A little while later we heard a few vocalizing behind the town hall, so I felt a little better about my 2012 year list!

As we sat along the bluffs drinking a lunchtime beer we ran into a couple of guys who had been metal detecting along the shore. They had found a "half a tweezer" and a Connecticut quarter, which they handed over for inspection. They were pretty excited about their discoveries, and the encounter was kind of a fun juxtaposition against the oddity of collecting bird sightings that is the act of birding.

The ferry home proved a success even though it was a brisk ride as we travelled straight into the steady NW wind. The seas had picked up since the morning, and it was kind of nasty. Anna, as she went to the bathroom for a second joked about not seeing anything while she was inside, and wouldn't you know it we had an amazing look at a Common Murre right next to the boat. As it lifted off the water we could see that it was transitioning into alternate plumage. A little after that we had 3 more Common Murres in flight, and it was nice to have just seen one so close to have a good calibration of the plumage coloration opposed to the darker black Razorbills also in the area.

Once back on land we hurried to the car and got going again, along the southern coast of RI. We made a couple of forays down the beach roads as we headed west toward Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge. We picked up Wild Turkey, a second Red-shouldered Hawk and a Cooper's Hawk before arriving at Trustom to zoom out the trail in the fading light. There had been a number of species of waterfowl on the pond reported earlier in the week, including Barrow's Goldeney just the night before. As dusk overwhelmed us we worked over the silhouetted ducks on the pond picking up a few species here and there, and as we hit the field at 17:15 there were 3 American Woodcocks displaying. It was a great way to end the day to hear their peenting and falling twittering, which to me reversed Punxatawney Phil's forecast of a delayed spring. After all was said and done, we ended up with 65 species, which will seem pitiful compared to some of the other participating team's totals, but what can you do, we're not in Mexico!

Full list of Species Seen:

1. Canada Goose 6, 36, 68 = 110
2. Gadwall 8
3. American Wigeon 3
4. American Black Duck 4, 25, 32 = 61
5. Mallard 26, 16 = 42
6. Common Eider 55, 36, 30 =121
7. Surf Scoter 2, 6 =8
8. White-winged Scoter 10
9. Black Scoter 20, 22 scoter sp. 20,8 = 28
10. Long-tailed Duck 4
11. Ring-necked Duck 8
12. Greater Scaup 900 Greater/Lesser Scaup 75
13. Bufflehead 14, 16 = 30
14. Common Goldeneye 10, 2, 37, 6 = 55
15. Red-breasted Merganser 12, 12, 28, 6 = 58
16. Ring-necked Pheasant 3
17. Wild Turkey 9
18. Red-throated Loon 1
19. Common Loon 25, 7, 9 = 41
20. Horned Grebe 1
21. Northern Gannet 55, 45, 175 = 275
22. Double-crested Cormorant 2, 3 = 5
23. Great Cormorant 8, 22, 18 = 40
24. Ruddy Duck 75
25. Great Blue Heron 2, 2 = 4
26. Cooper's Hawk 1 seen on Moonstone Beach Rd
27. Red-shouldered Hawk 1 Seen by airport, adult, 1 Camp Fuller Rd.
28. Northern Harrier 3
29. American Coot 30
30. Purple Sandpiper 4, 7 = 11
31. American Woodcock 3 Displaying at Trustom Pond
32. Black-legged Kittiwake 8, 13 = 21
33. Ring-billed Gull 20, 6, 18 = 44
34. Herring Gull 45, 65, 55, 15 = 180
35. Great Black-backed Gull 20, 35, 32, 6 = 93 gull sp. 150
36. Common Murre 4 one on the water, 3 inflight, Identified by their plumage coloration
37. Razorbill 1, 3 = 4 large alcid sp. 6, 5
38. Great-horned Owl 1
39. Short-eared Owl 1 at Trustom Wildlife Refuge
40. Rock Pigeon 5
41. Mourning Dove 4
42. Belted Kingfisher 2, 1 = 3
43. Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
44. Downy Woodpecker 3, 1 = 4
45. Northern Flicker 2
46. Blue Jay 3
47. American Crow 24
48. Fish Crow 18
49. Black-capped Chickadee 7, 6 = 13
50. White-breasted Nuthatch 1
51. Carolina Wren 12, 2 = 14
52. American Robin 6
53. Northern Mockingbird 2
54. European Starling 35
55. Yellow-rumped Warbler 3 warbler sp. 1
56. Song Sparrow 11, 2 = 13
57. White-throated Sparrow 4
58. Dark-eyed Junco 7
59. Northern Cardinal 12, 3 = 15
60. Red-winged Blackbird 2
61. Rusty Blackbird 1
62. Common Grackle 1
63. House Finch 8, 2 = 10
64. American Goldfinch 2
65. House Sparrow 45

Support My Big Birding Day to help the Alamos Wildlands Alliance!!

This Thursday my team, "the Hawkeyes" will be participating in a BIG DAY! What this means is that Anna Hallstrom and I will spend 24 hours trying to see or hear as many bird species as possible. We are doing this to get sponsors to raise money for a very cool and very important field station in Sonora, Mexico, the Navopatia Field Station of the Alamos Wildlands Alliance. The field station exists in a very unique desert/cactus habitat along the eastern shores of the Sea of Cortez. Every year, more and more of this habitat has been ripped up since NAFTA to farm your squash and tomatoes. Of course we like those veggies, but the markets that drive it, and the economy that makes it happen is not sustainable and the long term future of this enterprise is dim, yet the habitat is not recoverable. MANY of our nation's songbirds use this habitat to winter over and many more use it to fatten up during the boom monsoon seasons during migration.
This year, the Hawkeyes are putting a new twist to the Big Day! We are calling it a fifty / fifty challenge. That is, you sponsor us, and if we don't see fifty species, we will donate your pledge to the Alamos Wildlands Alliance out of our pockets! If we do see fifty species, you're on the hook for your donation, plus fifty cents for every bird species over 50! Get it? This is significant because in Rhode Island in February, it's not all that easy to see fifty species in a day, and the max that we could pretty much ever hope to see is about 70. So either way, we won't be breaking the bank, but it'll be fun either way!!
A fun way to help an awesome cause and some amazing people doing research on critical issues around the songbirds that call Sonora home. To read more about AWA's research and field station please click here!
To Donate to our team, the HAWKEYES click here
Also, I'll be tweeting throughout the day about our adventure. Follow me here.