Subject: Re: Loon Question
Date: Sep 21 00:09:31 1997
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Kristi Streiffert writes:

>I just saw a loon with a yellow bill. Does that make it a yellow billed
>loon,

Yes!

>or could it be a juv. of another species?

Nope: bill color is diagnostic. What plumage do you think this bird was in?
How would you describe it?

>If it is a yellow
>billed loon, are they unusual on Lake Roosevelt in Coulee Dam?

Depends on what you mean by "unusual". Rare, yes, quite, but if you surveyed
the lake regularly through the Sep-May migration/winter/migration windows,
you'd likely find it a regular visitor, whether as transient or winter
resident, perhaps not every year but more often than not.

On the Cascadian coast S of the Queen Charlotte Islands, they're rare but
regular as single birds anywhere S of the Arctic/treeline. They winter S
along the Pacific Coast to Baja, and occasionally on large-deepwater lakes
in the interior, first showing up southbound in mid-September and the last
northbound migrants departing this part of the coast in mid-May. How the
Interior migration chronology works I don't know.

Single birds can occasionally show up at coastal locations in the summer
months, as immature non-breeders (like Common Loons that are sexually too
immature to join the northbound/interior migration in spring but can still
assume the definitive adult Alternate plumage anyway). As far as I know the
furthest S one can see these immature non-breeders in summer with any kind
of consistency is the Queen Charlottes Islands off the British Columbia
coast--by extension, I guess they'd also be present in the islands
immediately off the mainland at that latitude.

So the short answer '-) is that, yes, any Yellow-billed Loon would be rare
but not necessarily unusual on Lake Roosevelt. Congratz!

Michael Price The Sleep of Reason Gives Birth to Monsters
Vancouver BC Canada -Goya
mprice at mindlink.net