Hello,

At 9:30 a.m. today, my wife and I began birding at the marina in Tokeland. I
noticed a bird on the island directly across from the parking area west of
the R.V. park that I at first dismissed as a Bonaparte's Gull. Something made
me look closer at it and I noticed that it had deep red legs and a
redddish-orange bill. I noticed the bold white eye ring and that the black on
the head seemed a little different. We looked at the Sibley's guide and, lo
and behold, we discovered that we were looking at a Black-headed Gull. It
stayed out of the water and gave us great views of it for over 30 minutes
when it decided to tuck it's head and rest. We hoped that someone would show
up so we could share this with them, but nobody came. Finally, we headed back
to the car and as we arrived at the parking lot, two fellow birders drove up.
I told them of my discovery and we hustled back down to take a look. You
guessed it...it had flown away. They said that they would stay awhile and see
if it returned, but as I see no other postings about it here, they must have
had no luck. Our sighting came very close to high tide and on the island with
it were 75-100 Marbled Godwits (no Hudsonian), some Red Knots and Whimbrels.
Although there were many gulls on the marina floats, the Black-headed Gull
was the only one using the island.Hopefully it will hang around and let
itself be seen for awhile.

Eric Bjorkman
Vancouver, WA.
BjorkmanTE at aol.com