Dear Tweeters,

Yesterday, 2-20-2010, I watched a Glaucous-winged Gull eat a sea star at Green Point in Washington Park, Anacortes.

Somebody had asked about gulls eating sea stars on Tweeters recently, if I remember correctly.

This was an adult gull, actually a GWGU X Western Gull hybrid, judging from the dark grey tips to the primaries. It had much greyish smudging on the head (winter plumage), and medium-pale, greenish yellow irides. The bird had been floating alone in the swells, about fifty meters off the very point, for a good 30 minutes after I arrived, sometimes shadowed by a lone Pelagic Cormorant.

Then, at about 2:50 pm or so, the gull hopped onto the rocky shoreline (after some kids had left that spot). I was perhaps thirty meters away, probably less.

I wasn't really watching it at first, but soon I noticed that the gull had a broken-up sea star in its bill. The sea star was pinkish in color on its upper surfaces, more yellowish below. When I first saw the gull with the echinoderm, it was eating one of the arms. The arm was about as long as the gull's bill, but more slender. Soon the bird swallowed this. Less than a minute later, it picked up another arm, then hopped down into the water, where it ate it. Then I quit watching the bird.

Hope this information is of some value to whomever it was that posted earlier.

Other fun birds yesterday included a male Anna's Hummingbird singing at the Ship Harbor ferry landing, four California Quail at Anacortes Telescope, and a couple of neck-banded Tundra Swans (blue bands with hard-to-read yellow characters) just north of Conway.

Oh, and there was an albinistic (dilute-plumaged or leucistic) Red-winged Blackbird near the west end of P Johnson Road, north of Conway. It was with about 150 Brewer's and 20 other Red-winged Blackbirds, just east of the Skagit River's south fork dike.

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch
Gary Bletsch ? Near Lyman, Washington (Skagit County), USA ? garybletsch at yahoo.com ? ?

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