Hey tweets, as the sun came out today and the temperature
counterintuitively dropped, I found myself sitting on the banks of the
Duwamish near Building 13075, waiting for the flock of gulls from
nearby rail yards, truck yards, dumpsters and whatnot to come to the
river for their postprandial bath. Matt Bartels swears that this spot
is the most reliable place in the state to see Thayer's Gulls, and to
be able to compare them to Herring Gulls.

The stage was set. The sunlight was bright and shining over my shoulder
onto the water. My line of sight was unimpeded by bushes, bicyclists,
or heat mirages. My scope was being buffeted by the wind, but my tripod
is so gosh-darn heavy it would take a Force 4 Tornado (as measured by
the Fujita scale) to move it. Everything was perfect except there were
no birds. By "no birds" I mean not even a crow flying overhead. Once
the Common Merganser that was floating on the river when I arrived had
floated past the bend, I was left alone to commune with purely floral
life.

I began to think about a story I had read in the "Little House on the
Prairie" series. It's in the "Farmer Boy" volume and tells how the
pioneers cut blocks of solid river ice in the winter, and then packed
them with straw into a shed. The ice blocks were so well insulated that
they lasted even when the winter ended and the weather got warm. The
book doesn't say how many months it took the last block of ice to melt,
which made me wonder if it would be April, May, or perhaps even July
before I regained any feeling in my fingers.

Luckily, just before passing cyclists thought to stick a corncob pipe
in my mouth, a little flock of five gulls swooped in and began to
splash themselves almost directly below me. One of them had eyes so
dark a brown, surrounded by purplish eyerings, they looked like melted
Nestle's chocolate chips stuck in its face. Thayer's Gull for sure.
"There you are," I smiled and felt warm clear down to my toes. I had
made an appointment with a gull, you see, and it had shown up.

One of the charms about birding is that you can make appointments with
birds, and they may or may not keep them. This is very unlike the
controlled environment we humans construct for ourselves. In our
made-for-us world, if you buy a ticket to go see a play in the theatre,
you can generally be sure that when you arrive on the proper day at the
correct time, your appointment will be kept, and you will be
entertained. There's no mystery in that, no risk. If you are having a
dental adventure and you make an appointment with your dentist, you can
rest assured that you'll be trying to make conversation around the
confines of a dental dam right on time. Modern dental appointments may
be wonderful, but there's no wonder in them, if you see what I mean.

But with birds, you never know. Wild birds are not controlled by us.
They do as they please. A bird that has been coming to the same spot
for days might all of a sudden decide to vanish on the day you decide
to go find it. You may have driven halfway across the state for your
appointment, only to get totally stiffed. There are no guarantees in
birding. So it's all the sweeter when you think you know what the birds
might do, and by golly, they do it.

On a roll, I staggered back to the car and drove over to Gene Coulon
Park in Renton, where the Glaucous Gull was putting on a fine display
on the log boom near the park, as per the program. It was breath-taking
to see this snowy bird against the backdrop of flaming magenta sunset.
The Slaty-back was nowhere to be found, at least not by me, but two out
of three is more than enough. A great day. - Connie Sidles, Seattle

constancesidles at gmail.com