Tag Archives: Laughing Gull

Exceptional Morning Flight at Sandy Point, 9/29/2021

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The carnage of this morning’s Morning Flight.

I don’t usually post my Sandy Point Morning Flight totals here, but today was more than worthy of a little something extra.  After 8 nights with little or virtually migration (well, at least not a big flight on ideal winds), clearing skies and a light northwesterly breeze finally opened the floodgates.  Here are the 1:00am reflectivity and velocity images, for example.

I am sure Monhegan – where I just spent 5 glorious days (despite the lack of a huge flight; more on that soon!) – was great, Sandy Point was just outstanding.  In fact, it was my 3rd highest all-time flight!

Early on, clouds made everything into little black shapes as the intense flight proceeded at all levels. Wind, a cacophony of kinglets ringing in my ears, and the two loudest and most vociferous Tufted Titmice who just stayed screaming in the magic birch all conspired to further reduce my ability to identify birds. But mostly, waves of dozens at a time were simply clicked as “unidentified” as I tried to keep pace with quantifying the flight. Furthermore, there were at least 3-4 hunting Merling, a Cooper’s Hawk, and a Peregrine Falcon, which added to the swirling chaos. It was a challenge, that’s for sure. “I do this for fun?” I asked Matthew.

Here’s the scorecard from the Morning Flight of birds that passed over and through Sandy Point, Cousin’s Island, Yarmouth this am:

6:34-11:00am

50F, mostly cloudy NW 7.9-10.0 becoming mostly sunny, NW 10.9-12.5mph.

2,012 unidentified – *3rd highest

1,335 Yellow-rumped Warblers– *New Record High

445 Northern Parulas

324 unidentified kinglets

230 Cedar Waxwings

148 Golden-crowned Kinglets

139 Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers – *New record

109 Northern Flickers

108 Dark-eyed Juncos

92 Ruby-crowned Kinglets

77 Blackpoll Warblers

75 Black-throated Green Warblers

56 Palm Warblers

39 White-throated Sparrows

33 Black-throated Blue Warblers – *3rd highest.

33 American Robins

28 Rusty Blackbirds – *2nd highest

25 Red-eyed Vireos

22 Eastern Phoebes – *2nd highest

20 Blue-headed Vireos

20 Nashville Warblers  – *2nd highest

17 Chipping Sparrows

16 American Redstarts

13 Magnolia Warblers

12 Blue Jays

8 Black-capped Chickadees

6 Common Loons

5 Black-and-white Warblers

5 Sharp-shinned Hawks

4 unidentified blackbirds

3 Cape May Warblers

3 Swainson’s Thrushes  – including two observed crossing.

3 Tufted Titmice

2 Scarlet Tanagers

2 unidentified vireos

2 Yellow Warblers

2 Red-breasted Nuthatches

2 Tennessee Warblers

2 American Goldfinches

1 Chestnut-sided Warbler

1 Pine Warbler

1 White-crowned Sparrow

1 Broad-winged Hawk

1 White-breasted Nuthatch

1 Hermit Thrush

1 unidentified Catharus

1 Red-bellied Woodpecker

1 Osprey

X Common Yellowthroats

1 YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO – my 7th all-time here. Made 4 “false starts” before crossing at 10:04am.

Cuckoos are such shape-shifters in flight that I feel like I could have counted each pass from the one bird as a different species each time it passed!

For a grand total of 5,487 birds, my *3rd highest all-time count.  So yes indeed, birds have very much been backed up.

Meanwhile, adding to the excitement (and chaos) this morning was a massive feeding frenzy of Double-crested Cormorants and gulls. While I am sure a few migrants snuck by overhead, I couldn’t help but take a few moments to enjoy it…and make sure there were no rarities among the gulls!   15-20 Laughing Gulls and 4 Bonaparte’s Gulls joined 75-100 Ring-billed Gulls in snatching the baitfish that the Double-crested Cormorants had pushed right up onto the sandbar as it slowly emerged from the tide.  It was quite a show!

Boothbay Harbor Mini-Pelagic with Cap’n Fish’s Cruises, 6/7/2021

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Thanks to last fall’s wildly successful half-day pelagic with Cap’n Fish’s Cruises, we partnered up again to offer three outings in 2021.  On Monday, June 7th, the first of three departures took place.

June is an untraditional month for southern Maine pelagics, but our Boothbay Harbor departures, and a fast, steady boat allow us access to some prime areas. Few people had this in mind however on Monday, when instead, most people were just excited to escape the stifling heat on land!

The seas had died down overnight, and the mere 2 foot swell was often barely noticeable. A cooling breeze over the 56-degree water made us welcome our layers, but not at all miss the sweltering mainland.

There are few guarantees in pelagic birding…well unless you visit a seabird island! So instead of just searching for needles in the offshore haystack, we first headed over to Eastern Egg Rock.  We sifted through many hundreds of Common Terns until everyone got good looks at Roseate (20+) and Arctic (20+) Terns. 75-100 Atlantic Puffins, 100+ Black Guillemots, 500+ Laughing Gulls, Common Eiders, a Spotted Sandpiper, Double-crested Cormorants, Herring Gulls, and Great Black-backed Gulls were all observed from the comfort of our limited-capacity boat.

A passerine on our way to Eastern Egg Rock may have been an oriole (awaiting photos to review), but that was our only non-seabird of the day.  Kelsey pointed out lighthouses, islands, and other landmarks as we motored from the harbor out past Monhegan Island.

We then traveled over 20 miles to waters over 500 feet deep, and a ledge where the bottom rose steeply to a depth of only 380. On the way out, it was quiet. Really, really quiet.  Uh-oh, is this was June pelagic birding is like around here too?

But traveling over fairly flat, often sandy or muddy bottom is not a good sample, and as we hit the deeper water and some topography, we began to see our first tubenoses of the day: Wilson’s Storm-Petrels, which have just arrived from their sub-Antarctic breeding areas.

With Ian chumming, petrels began to come in closer, and the first of our Northern Fulmars arrived to check things out. While we worked the ledge, and then double-backed on our chum slick, the birds kept appearing and Captain Mike did a great job keeping birds in the best lighting possible. 

Some of the highlights included the rather late fulmars and an unseasonable offshore Common Murre, but I think the real highlight was how well we saw just about everything!  Even two of our Red-necked Phalaropes were close enough to age and sex (they were adult female), and Ian’s chum brought fulmars and storm-petrels in close.  While we only had one Great Shearwater on this early date, it too made a close pass, affording good looks for everyone.

The total seabird count away from Eastern Egg Rock (see estimates from there above) was as follows (not including gulls and other nearshore species)

  • 103 Wilson’s Storm-Petrels
  • 13 Northern Gannets
  • 10+ Arctic Terns (out of sight of Eastern Egg)
  • 5 Unidentified phalaropes
  • 5 RED-NECKED PHALAROPES
  • 4 NORTHERN FULMARS
  • 1 Great Shearwater
  • 1 COMMON MURRE

It was not the diversity of later summer and fall, and certainly not the numbers (at least once we left the magic of Eastern Egg), but we had a nice selection of “good” birds, great looks at them, and we did all of this in less than four hours in offshore waters.  The convenience of a Boothbay departure, the accessibility of some rich feeding areas without heading too far, the speed and comfort of the boat (especially the grilled cheese sandwiches), and more resulted in another rewarding trip and a sure sign of the potential of these tours.

In fact, our next trip in July (no chumming on this one, unfortunately) with a similar itinerary of starting at Eastern Egg Rock is filling up fast. We’re also now accepting reservations for our October outing, which, based on last year’s results, we are already looking forward too!

Intriguing Apparent Hybrid Gull at Niagara Falls.

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Jeannette and I took our annual pre-Bradbury Mountain Hawkwatch (starts on Wednesday!) roadtrip this year to Buffalo and Niagara Falls.  We went to Buffalo on a pilgrimage to visit the Anchor Bar – the birthplace of the Buffalo Wing. And we spent the rest of the time in the gull-watching Mecca of Niagara Falls.

On our first day at Niagara, wind gusts over 60mph were ripping over the falls (the local airport recorded a gust of 72 mph!) and birding was brutal at best, but essentially impossible (at least for a vacation). We spent a couple of hours in Niagara Falls State Park, but although it looked pretty that day, it was a day to go to the Anchor Bar! We also checked out the Olmstead-designed Delaware Park while in the big city.
Day 1 falls

The next day (Thursday, 3/9) it was quite a bit colder, but the winds were “only” 15-25mph. It was far from pleasant, but it was most definitely bird-able! And the birding was very good!
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Despite the relatively late date for the peak of “winter” gulling here (despite what it felt like), we sorted through the many thousands of gulls (predominately Herring and Ring-billed, with a small number of Great Black-backed) and conservatively estimated at least 31 Iceland Gulls, 23 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and 8 Glaucous Gulls in and around Goat Island alone.
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Third-cycle “Kumlien’s Iceland Gull

And then there was this one:
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I identified it as a possible or “putative” Laughing Gull x Ring-billed Gull hybrid on account of several features:
– near-complete blackish hood with smudgy white around the eye.
– mantle was 1-2 shades darker than the surrounding Ring-billed Gulls.
– overall size and structure was comparable to Ring-billed Gulls, and didn’t bring one of the smaller hooded gulls to mind.
– large white apical spots on the outer primaries.
– dark orange bill with a blackish band, slightly smaller and thinner than nearby Ring-bills.
– yellow-orange legs

And frankly, it looked a lot like photos I have seen of this presumed pairing, such as this one from Amar Ayyash in Chicago.

Jeannette photographed it and we moved on. We never felt a need to flush it, and the bird clearly was not going to raise its wings on its own for us! But feeling the identification was solid, we enjoyed it, left it alone, and went on our way (perhaps we were simply being ultra-conservative about disturbance after the Great Gray Owl debacles this winter!)

A few minutes later, we ran into another birder, and alerted him to our find. He saw it, got some photos, came back to chat, and then went back to the bird. We continued to bird our way around the island.

I knew I needed to take a look at the photos on the computer, and do some homework. A couple of things really bothered me.  But before I had a chance to study the photos and re-evaluate my initial ID, chatter broke out on the area’s birding listserve. Chris Kundl was the birder we met, and he went back and spent some quality time with the bird, extensively photographing the wing pattern, which we – unforgivably!- did not. He, and several other local birders, then identified it as a (rarer) Black-headed Gull x Ring-billed Gull hybrid, based on the extensive white in the wingtips and the white leading edge to the wing. (His photos are here)

Kevin McGowan posted a link to a basic-plumaged individual of this presumed combination, and it definitely looks similar.

However, as Shai Mitra then pointed out on the listserve, a few things are a bit off for that combination. “(T)o me, this bird looks so unlike a Black-headed Gull that I remain puzzled. Specifically, it looks large, thick-necked, large-headed, broad-winged, and heavy-billed. Black-headed Gull is only half the mass of a Ring-billed Gull and very differently shaped, whereas this bird looks quite similar to Ring-billed Gull in overall size and structure. It is of course possible for hybrids to tilt toward one parent or the other in various ways, as opposed to showing intermediacy, but note that the Sullivan County bird from 2002 showed much more intermediacy in these very features (e.g., more obvious influence of Black-headed Gull in terms of size and shape). Looking more closely at the plumage, I also note that the hood seems to lack any of the brownish tones usually evident in Black-headed Gull, and that the mantle appears subtly darker than those of Ring-billed Gulls (Black-headed Gull is notably pale-mantled).”

The size, structure, shape, blackish (not brownish) hood, and darker mantle was what led me to the call of Laughing x Ring-billed. But how else does one explain that white leading edge to the wing? And the extensive white on the outer primaries? A hybrid Bonaparte’s Gull would explain that (and the black tone of the hood), but that’s even smaller and daintier gull than Black-headed.

So what does this mean? Simply: I don’t know. My initial ID does not explain the wing pattern, and that really bothers me.  So what is this? It looks like I have some more homework to do – and I will be sending this blog around to gather additional insight. I also want to look up when the various hooded gulls acquire their alternate plumage, as this seems incredibly early for a hooded gull to be hooded. Keeping in mind that not all hybrids are perfectly intermediate, that backcrosses occur, and that it’s hard to “prove” parentage, I think this bird is worthy of a little more debate.

Of course, we looked at everything else during our visit, including a couple of Harlequin Ducks off Goat Island, and goodly numbers of a wide variety of ducks (especially Common Goldeneyes, Red-breasted Mergansers, and Buffleheads) at a number of locations. And later, we finally caught up with a “as good as they get” Thayer’s Gull – a spiffy adult at Devil’s Hole State Park (after passing on labeling a couple as such at Goat Island earlier in the day).
gorge and whirlpool
The Niagara River Gorge and the Whirlpool from Whirlpool State Park.

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Redheads

Unfortunately, it was already time to head home on Friday, so after another walk around Niagara Falls State Park, we began the trek eastward, birding Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, the winds were very strong once again and our time was limited, but we thoroughly enjoyed the hundreds of Tundra Swans (it’s been a while since we’ve seen any!), good numbers of many ducks especially Ring-necked, and sorted through many thousands of Canada Geese at the refuge and nearby cornfields (13 Cackling Geese in Gypsum Pond were our only non-Canadas, unfortunately) before beginning the long drive home (made much longer by snow squalls and that darn Norlun trough that set up over southern Maine!).

Our time was far too limited, as always, but it’s time to get ready to count some hawks!  And at least we still have this gull to mull over.
Falls from Goat Island