Greetings all
I ventured up to Lake Washington this morning with Carol Schulz hoping to
refind the Great Black-backed found by Gene Hunn yesterday afternoon. We
arrived shortly before 9:00am, and after about 25 minutes the bird was
spotted at a distance over towards Gene Coulon Park and several
distinguishing field marks were noted for several minutes by at least 7
people. I immediately hopped in Ryan Shaw's car and we quickly drove over
to the park where we obtained rather excellent views of this incredibly rare
bird for a little under 10 minutes swimming in the water just off Duck
Island. Eventually the bird flew and landed back out in the lake, then over
to the Cedar Rivermouth where is seemed to land. We drove back over there
but nobody was able to refind it after that up to noon (to my knowledge).

The bird is a good bit larger than any other gulls out there. The bill is
rediculously long, nearly as long as the head, and very deep. I believe
this bird is in 2nd basic plumage, as the eye is showing some signs of
paling (although at a distance it looks dark). The bill is strongly
bicolored, light pink with black outer half. Head is all white with a few
thin streaks along the side and the breast is very pale with some light
brown smudging. The wings are patterned with a series of rows of coarsely
checkered black and white upperwing covert feathers. The underwing coverts
are distinctively checkered or marbled. In flight there's a very distinct
paler brown wing panal on the inner primaries, contrasting with a dark
secondary bar and blackish outer primaries. Perched, the blackish primaries
(P6-10 at least) have very thin, rather unnoticeable pale fringes. A small
number of dark, charcoal gray feathers have replaced the immature plumage on
the mantle. The rump and tail pattern was very well observed by us. The
uppertail coverts are all bright white with thin, sporadically placed dark
flecks, while the tail has a consistently narrow, solid dark band and white
terminal fringe. Legs were rather pale, dull fleshy pink.

Greater White-fronted Goose (14)
Eared Grebe (1)
Mew Gull (10)
Ring-billed Gull (15)
California Gull (1)
Thayer's Gull (12+)
Herring Gull (40)
Glaucous Gull (1-2W)
Glaucous-winged Gull (1000+)
Western Gull (5)
hybrids (400)

I recommend the Collin's European Guide for a solid illustration of Great
Black-backed Gull plumage.

See my post from 9 January for directions to these two locations.

Cheers,
Charlie Wright
Sumner WA