Hello, tweets.

A contingent from the Slater Museum (Peter Wimberger, Gary Shugart,
and me) headed over to the other side of Commencement Bay this
afternoon to look for the Black-tailed Gull. We were there from about
3 pm to 5:40 pm, with no sightings. Just before we arrived, some
people who were there saw what might have been the gull heading away
across the bay--too bad! I was the last to leave, as it was getting
just about too dark to distinguish the gulls and the rain was getting
serious. Reminds me of an old German saying, "Des nachts sind alles
M?wen grau." "At night, all gulls are gray." Actually, I'm
paraphrasing a saying about cats, but it fits perfectly the futile act
of focusing your scope on a flock of gulls all of which have dark gray
mantles. The bird may well still be around, but it's not guaranteed!
Besides the Bonaparte's, Mew, California, and Glaucous-winged (+
hybrid) gulls in good numbers, we saw Mallard, Horned Grebe, Double-
crested and Brandt's Cormorants, Great Blue Heron, Black Turnstone,
Pigeon Guillemot and Rhinoceros Auklet.

One of the most interesting things to me was seeing the great majority
of Bonaparte's Gulls, maybe 40 birds that were perched all around the
edge of the roosting flock, get up and fly away together! Another
interesting thing was the great scarcity of immatures of the three
smaller gull species. Two Mews were the only first-year birds I saw of
these three species, also a few second-year Mews and Californias.
-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net