This afternoon in Brooklyn, after dropping my daughter off at the train, I made a couple of stops on the way back home to check for birds, planning not to leave the warmth of the car. There was an adult male European Wigeon off the 58th Street pier in Brooklyn and 330 RBGU roosting on the pier. A few minutes glassing the gulls circling over the Owl's Head WWTP revealed nothing of interest, but as I turned onto Shore Road to head home I saw there were a good number of RBGU roosting on Veteran's Memorial pier. I only had my binoculars and not enough warm clothing but decided to park and walk out on the pier far enough to make sure the BHGU that had frequented this area over the past few years was not roosting among them. This is what I found instead:
http://tinyurl.com/k3of77w I actually had to go home and retrieve my camera (and some warmer clothes) to get these shots, and luckily the bird was still there. I say lucky because shortly thereafter the whole flock upped with some birds heading south and some north and some settling on the water. I lost the Common Gull and then did not relocate it in the next 1 hour and 45 minutes. It was a little after high tide and in total the bird was on or in the area for ~30 minutes before I lost track of it. I initially sdaw the bird around 2:00. I was initially drawn to the dark eye, smallish yellow-green bill with smudgy black subterminal markings, a more rounded head giving it a gentler expression than the nearby Ring-bills. A prominent tertial crescent and decidedly larger mirror in P10 all seemed good. The mantle color seemed concolorous with the surrounding RBGU and the legs appeared more yellow than I expected, but some research online and in my gull reference books at home seem to indicate a high degree of variability in Larus Canus, as there is in most of the larger gull taxa. Unfortunately I was not able to get any spread wing or flight shots but I did note that there was a sizable mirror on P9 and moons somewhere on P6-8/9, though I'm not exactly sure of their placement. Regards, Shane Blodgett Brooklyn NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
