Hello, tweeters.

I thought perhaps someone else would report this, but not seeing it on line,
I will do so. I struck out on rare gulls Saturday morning, although it was
great birding anyway. But then I was informed when we returned in the
afternoon that the Great Black-backed had shown up 10 minutes after Netta
and I left! Argghh! We had to go take care of responsibilities, among them
the printing of the text of the shorebird book I've been working on, to send
it to the publisher this week. I hope the book will be worth missing the
gull yet again! We returned at 3:15 and stayed until 4:30 with no return of
that fabled bird. I wonder if it has yet been seen twice in a day.

But a bit before 4 pm, we did spot a third-winter Glaucous Gull bathing in
the most upstream group. It was a surprisingly small bird, and Iceland Gull
entered my head as I was trying to get satisfactory looks at it, but it was
surely a Glaucous, presumably a female of the Alaska population that is the
smallest of its species. Its wingtip extension seemed right for Glaucous
rather than Iceland. The bill wasn't impressively large, smaller than that
of some of the Glaucous-wings but a bit larger than Thayer's so too large
for Iceland.

It looked superficially like an adult bird, with a pale iris, largely pale
gray mantle, and pure white wingtips, but had a mostly black spot where the
red is usually on the adult bill and some faint barring on the undertail
coverts and perhaps a bit on the upperwing coverts. If it hadn't been for
the bill spot, I might have considered it an adult and not looked closely
for the other markings. It stood out conspicuously among the nearby
Glaucous-winged, hybrids, and Thayer's because of its wingtips, but it could
easily be missed in a flock in which the wingtips weren't visible. Its size
was about that of the Glaucous-wings but not as large as the largest ones.

This is a bird not reported before, so there may still be a few surprises in
those 10,000+ birds.

Dennis Paulson
--
Netta Smith and Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115