Hi Tweets,

Gene Hunn writes:

>We also found the 1st year Glaucous Gull at the Coast Guard Station on Ediz
>hook, on the runway, then later on a roof of a building. A very few well
>marked Herring and Thayer's in the same flock. This Glaucous Gull is huge,
>clearly larger than the largest Glaucous-wingeds nearby. I wonder if it
>could be the nominate race rather than the smaller western race barrovianus.

Just over a year ago, while travelling on a bus from Crescent Beach back to
Vancouver BC, I spotted a similarly enormous Glaucous Gull Larus hyperboreus
towering over a flock of Glaucous-winged Gulls L. glaucescens. A similar
query to another list brought this reply from Sherman Suter:

>>The citation to the paper that Alvaro Jamarillo referred to is:
>>Banks, Richard C. 1986. Subspecies of the Glaucous Gull, Larus
>>hyperboreus (Aves: Charadriiformes). Proceedings of the Biological
>>Society of Washington 99(1): 1491-59.
>>
>>Abstract:
>>Current writings treat the Holarctic Glaucous Gull, Larus hyperboreus,
>>either as a monotypic species or as having two or three subspecies; if
>>divided, birds of Canada, Greenland, and Europe are considered to be of
>>the nominate subspecies. This study shows that there are four
>>subspecies, the birds of Canada and Greenland being separable from
>>those of Europe; the name L. h. leuceretes Schleep, 1819, based on a
>>Greenland bird, is available for the former. Alaskan birds (L. h.
>>barrovianus) are relatively dark on the mantle, those of Canada and
>>Greenland are pale, those of Europe and western Asia are dark, and
>>those of Siberia (pallidissimus) are very pale. From the small Alaskan
>>birds there is an increase in size to the east around the Holarctic to very
>>large birds in Siberia. The Alaskan and Canadian populations intergrade
>>in extreme northwestern Canada. Nonbreeding Glaucous Gulls along the
>>Pacific coast of North America are of the Alaskan form, barrovianus;
>>those east of the Rockies, previously referred to as barrovianus or
>>hyperboreus, are all leuceretes or, in the western plains states, from the
>>intergrade area.
>>
>>Thanks to Richard Banks for providing a copy of his paper.

Interesting!

>Had close looks at two Pelagic Cormorants sitting side by side at Ediz Hook,
>one notably larger than the other. We presumed this was sexual dimorphism,
>the male the larger? Suggests caution about calling distant dark cormorants
>Brandt's and Pelagic just because one is bigger than the other.

And this is about the time when the adult Pelagic Cormorants Phalacrocorax
pelagicus return from god-knows-where having molted into Definitive
Alternate plumage with fully-developed white rump-patches. My observations
over a couple of winters of the ones hanging around the Prospect
Point/Lion's Gate Bridge in Stanley Park strongly suggest that the ones
which remain there all winter are non-adult birds, as there's no evidence of
pre-Alternate molt in their plumage. Last week of January to Week 1 Feb, a
whack of Alternate-plumaged birds simply appear. Either the locals have a
'hard molt' in which Alternate plumages busts out literally overnight, or
the adult (males only?) birds leave, go somewhere, molt and return.

And maybe *this* is the year one of the local nature organisations can take
a break from those busy rounds of meetings to get around to dissuading
Vancouver Park Board from dynamiting the cliff-face at the Prospect Point
colony just as the birds are setting up their nests, as it's done the last
four years consecutively. Gotta be a group to do it since the Board ignores
individuals even when one manages to get past the frontline flakcatchers.

Likewise the Pigeon Guillemots Cepphus columba at Stanley Park, gone by Week
4 Nov, back in Def Alt plumage around Week 3-4 Jan. No one knows where they
go. Any ideas?

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net

"Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit
because she's losing? Well, I say, 'Hard cheese!'"

--Mr. Burns, The Simpsons