Unfortunately this isn’t a photo essay, as most of the birds I’m seeing in this post are too far away to photograph! The video above can give you a sense of the challenges I’m facing in this extreme birding exercise.
I’ve spent a lot of time this year watching distant gull flocks streaming up the creek valley to the north. The gulls can be anywhere from overhead, to 3.4 miles away. Many times I can’t identify them, but sometimes if viewing conditions are good, and when they aren’t too far away, I can identify Herring from Ring-billed Gulls and pick out the occasional Great Black-backed and Lesser Black-backed Gulls. On my peak day I clicker-counted over 5,000 gulls stream west past my yard early in the morning as the birds flew west from their night roosts on the reservoirs and head towards feeding grounds along the Delaware River or the dump in Easton, PA.
Lots of gulls are on the move now, and the last few days the numbers have dropped but the dynamic has changed. Yesterday I was out pretty early but did not see a big flight of gulls. And many of the gulls I could ID were Lesser Black-backed Gulls. At the head of one line of these gulls was a massive pale gull–much larger than the Lesser Black-backeds. By size alone it would probably be either an albino or washed out young Great Black-backed Gull or a Glaucous Gull. Since it seemed like an adult bird with light gray mantle and upper wings without dark primary tips, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an aberrant Great Black-backed Gull.
This morning, birders were seeing a few Little Gulls in the Bonaparte’s Gull flocks at Spruce Run a few miles from my yard. So I decided to spend the morning scoping out the “gull highway” to the north in hopes that these gulls would move past my yard. There were very few gulls moving at all today. Finally, on my third watch just after 11:30am a quick-moving flock of gulls came into view heading west. With quick flapping wingbeats and white primary wedges I could tell they were Bonaparte’s Gulls. And sure enough, in the swirling flock was a smaller gull with dark underwings–Little Gull! They were moving so fast I couldn’t quite determine if it was an adult or 2nd winter bird, but by size and underwing it was identifiable a mile away–literally!
I’ll probably take some flack for calling a Little Gull at that distance. But with all the hours of intense gull watching I’ve done this year, I’m getting a sense of when birds are identifiable and when they aren’t, and this one wasn’t too tough. I have to let thousands of gulls go by unidentified, but fortunately the circumstances worked out for me to be able to ID these gulls as more than mere specks.
I still haven’t been able to ID an Iceland Gull from my yard–though I’m sure I must have seen some in these big flocks. That one will take better viewing conditions to be able to nail down–as many gulls can appear very pale at a distance depending on the light and background. Gulls at a distance–just part of the extreme birding involved with a Backyard Big Year!
