gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer) (02/13/90)
Hi all,
On Saturday (2/10) my wife and I did some poking around in
Gloucester, Ma. and Plum Island on the off chance of spotting the
Ross' Gull that had been seen there a week earlier. The Ross' hadn't
been seen and reported for 6 days and we didn't have any luck finding
it either. The gull flock around Niles Pond and Brace Cove
(Gloucester) was pretty big. We walked out the levy between the two
areas of water but the flock kept moving between the pond and the
cove, always setting down at the far side of either area (naturally!).
We were lucky enough to have an adult Common Black-headed gull plop
down in the water within 50 ft. of us, though. As it flew in I
thought "that bonaparte's has awfully dark wing linings" and when we
put the scope on it there was the nice red bill. (BTW, $1 to the
first person who can explain why the breeding-plumaged "Black-headed
Gull" has a brown cap 8^] ). We didn't find any white-winged gulls but
the viewing wasn't great and the rain was pretty unpleasant so we
probably just didn't look long enough.
The other high-light of the day were two snowy owls (on female, one
male) on Plum Island. Both remained nearly motionless on sand dunes
for close to 30 minutes. Other finds along the coast included horned
grebe and king eider. Despite the sometimes nasty weather, it was a
fun day.
Gregg
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"In future you should delete the words crunchy frog and
replace them with the legend crunchy raw unboned real
dead frog!!"
-- Inspector Bradshaw, The Hygiene Division
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