Kelly McAllister asked:

>I will happily agree with the capitalization of common names, but I am
>having trouble with the molted guillemots in early August. In south Puget
>Sound on August 15 I saw numerous mostly black Pigeon Guillemots and only
>one of the mostly white variety. I presumed the latter was a
>young-of-the-year bird. Are there really places in our region where the
>majority of adults are already in winter plumage?

I confess to the same initial reaction, but shrugged it off as part of what
sometimes happens in newspaper reports. And I agree with your assessment.
Those light-colored birds are recently fledged young-of-the-year. They look
a lot like winter-plumaged adults (as do most alcid fledglings), but not
quite. That's not to say there couldn't be an occasional adult (second-year
bird?) which is molting early, but I think that would be quite rare. Except
for the recent appearance of youngsters around here, most birds are indeed
still in breeding plumage. The only thing that gives me pause is the memory
of a guillemot on our last Christmas Count that was in virtually complete
breeding plumage - so the odd variant in molting schedules could exist.

That said, there are of course plenty of birds around that *are* changing
plumage, notably some waterfowl in eclipse ...

Happy Birding! --

Janet Hardin
Port Townsend, WA (where the guillemot could be designated "town bird")
wings at olympus.net