Hello Tweets,

This afternoon my mother and I checked the gull flock at Fort Borst Park in Centralia,Lewis Co. after reading Dave Hayden's Tweeters posting on the 27th. We arrived at 2pm and located a flock of 35 gulls at Fort Borst Park Lake,being primarily of Glaucous-winged Gull descent and immediately observed a single adult winter Thayer's Gull, of which Dave reported 2 birds at this location as recently as the 17th of January and presumably represents the first county record for Lewis Co. by him. The weather remained very wet with steady rain showers,but the gull activity was very limited to the parking lot along the lakeshore along with domestic waterfowl. The Thayer's Gull seemed very tame and allowed good photographs to be obtained at close range adding to our gull photo collections. This location is accessed off of I-5 just south of Harrison Ave,which if coming from the north along I-5 is the 1st Centralia exit and it appears the gulls are most attracted to bread feeding,but do move around the general area. We also observed 3 Western Gulls at this location during our visit,including 2 adult birds and 1 second year bird amongst the Glaucous-winged Gull flock with just a few Glaucous-winged/Western Gulls noted. Western Gulls is a very good gull species for Lewis Co. and it appears that this locations is a good pot for Larus gulls in general. Perhaps other new gull county records will show up at this location,such as Glaucous Gull,etc.

An additional bird of note during our visit to Fort Borst Park was an apparent Northwestern Crow that was photographed at close range,which was obviously much smaller than two nearby Am.Crows. We did not hear the bird vocalize,but the smaller size was very noticeable and the bird favored keeping to itself,although at this inland location it would appear very unusual.


Good birding,

Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
Tacoma,WA
godwit at worldnet.att.net
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