Greetings all,
Ryan Merrill and I are in North-Central WA on a 3 day trip to bird the Okanogan highlands and other nearby locales. As luck would have it, the location of the Ross's Gull was finally disclosed so once we found out via e-mail, we quickly left the Bridgeport Bar and headed to Palmer Lake!

We were scanning the lake when we ran into Jeff Heinlen, who found the bird on the 15th, and he informed us that a couple local birders had seen the bird earlier in the morning, but that it was chased a bit by a Peregrine Falcon and it had flown in a north direction. We scanned the south public access and the north public access and had no success for an hour and a half. We were getting discouraged when we tried another scan from the south end and this time picked it up along the south shoreline (closest to the road). We watched the bird for close to two hours, just blown away by this gorgeous gull. Its in such neat, fresh plumage, just blew me away. This was probably my most-wanted bird ever since I picked up a field guide when I was 8 so I am so stoked to have finally seen it.
I took a few heavy photos which I cropped heavily since I took them from a distance; be mindful not to trespass on private property along the lake.

3 photos are up on my flickr site:
www.flickr.com/photos/shyalbatross

Ryan Merrill also put some images up:
www.flickr.com/photos/rjm284
Good luck to those who make the trek out!

Cheers,
Ryan Shaw