A first winter Glaucous Gull (I'm not a good enough birder to use fancy words like "cycle") was present for a little while today on what is shown on Google Maps as Orowoc Lake. That map places it east of Bay Shore and west of Islip (Suffolk County). It's on the north side of 27A and easy to find, as it's the pond next to McDonald's. That would make it the second best gull I've seen at a McDonald's. Many may recall the Franklin's in Riverhead years ago. For what it's worth, someone showed up with bread for the Mallards and Ring-billed Gulls. I was curious to see whether the Glaucous would come closer in from where it was, at least in response to the commotion of fellow gulls. No such luck.
I had gone to this lake to see the Redheads, of which there were 5. A lone Common Merganser was present, mainly far out. At one point, it was causing a stir, so I took a series of pictures anyway. Blowing up the pictures, I see it with a small Carp or medium sized Goldfish (for those that don't know, many wild Goldfish have a similar brassy color and can get quite large). It hard to see how it was going to swallow a fish that size. And I couldn't see it, as the merganser turned away in the last frames, so I can't be sure if it succeeded. Steve Walter Bayside, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
