Monthly Archives: September 2019

Going For Gulls (Part 1)

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Just returned from a fun speaking road trip, where I got to share Braden’s and my birding adventures with fellow birders at Coeur d’Alene Audubon, the Puget Sound Bird Fest, Edmonds Bookshop, and Eagle Harbor Book Co. Thank you for the great turnouts, everyone! I, of course, also hoped to get in some good birding on the trip, but weather—or perhaps bad birding karma—conspired against me. The one bright spot? Gulls!

This Mew Gull at The Nature Conservancy’s Foulweather Bluff Preserve was a real surprise—and the first Mew Gull Braden or I had seen on the ground.

I don’t know about you, but I find gulls vexing. I do not even try to ID immature gulls, but the adults also offer enough variation to render me apoplectic. My first birding stop was Potholes State Park, about thirty miles south of Moses Lake, Washington. I arrived at a crummy time of day, but enjoyed seeing dozens of migrating Yellow-rumped Warblers and few White-crowned Sparrows. Looking out at the reservoir, however, I noticed a black-headed gull in the distance. I tramped toward it, figuring it had to be a Bonaparte’s or Franklin’s Gull. I mean this far inland what else could it be? The problem was the bird’s weird bill, which should have been either red or black. Instead, this bill was black with a yellow tip. “Geez,” I thought. “Maybe it’s turning red.” I called Braden to ask his opinion, but he was stuck in class back in Missoula, so I snapped a few photos and moved on.

What the . . . ? A gull with a black head and half-yellow bill was about the last thing I expected to see in the interior of Washington State. I guessed it was a weird Bonaparte’s Gull—and I was wrong. Read below for the shocking conclusion!

The next day in Seattle, my friends Steve and Carol and I took the ferry to Kingston and drove to Point No Point lighthouse, which had shown a lot of great water bird activity in the past few days. Alas, except for a few Rhinocerous Auklets, very little moved on the beach or offshore so I again turned my attention to gulls. I saw what looked like a Glaucous-winged Gull except that its tail was too dark, so I decided it must be a Herring Gull, as its wings were too light for a Western. Later, however, I ran into a couple of different birders who told me that Puget Sound was awash in hybrid gulls, mostly Glaucous-winged x Herring Gull or Glaucous-winged x Western. I had heard of hybrid gulls before, but didn’t realize they were so abundant and decided the one I had looked at must be a Glaucous-winged x Herring.

“Well-behaved” gulls that follow ID rules are difficult enough to identify. Unfortunately, many gulls make birders’ lives more difficult by hybridizing! Is this a Glaucous-winged x Herring Gull hybrid or a Glaucous-winged x Western Gull hybrid? The lighter wings and tail push me toward the former, but if you disagree, please weigh in!

A couple of mornings later, at the Puget Sound Birding Fest in Edmonds, my dismal birding luck continued—except for the gulls! Along the waterfront, I found 400 Heermann’s Gulls—probably Braden’s and my favorite gulls. I also found my first definite California Gull of the trip and settled in to give the hybrids more study. In a later post, I will try to explain the mental flow-chart I use for gulls, but suffice to say, it was a most enjoyable morning spent sharpening my gull skills and knowledge.

Heermann’s Gulls are not only some of the most beautiful gulls, they are among the easiest to identify. Can you tell why Braden and I love them so much?

The best discovery awaited me when I returned to Montana, however, and was showing Braden my gull photos. We found that I had taken a photo of a Mew Gull (which I had assumed was a juvenile of another species). Then, I showed him my “mystery” black-headed gull from Potholes State Park. “You saw that?” he exclaimed. “Well, yeah. Do you know what it is?” “Yeah,” he answered, and pulled up photos of a gull that had never even been on my radar—a Sabine’s Gull! This gull breeds in the Arctic tundra and migrates offshore of the Pacific coast. According to Sibley, “migrants rarely appear on inland ponds, lakes or rivers,” and yet here I’d seen one 200 miles from the coast!

Lesson Number 1: Once again, that birds don’t read the guide books. Lesson #2: That I still have a LOT to learn about gulls—but am making progress!

Listening to Birds

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Last week, to celebrate the final days of summer, Braden and I did something we’ve always wanted to do: bird banding. This, however, wasn’t just any bird-banding session. We were lucky enough to accompany the team of biologist Debbie Leick, whom we first met during last year’s Christmas Bird Count.

When Braden and I got to hang with them, Debbie Leick and her bird banding and recording partners had a productive morning, capturing thirty birds of fourteen different species.

Debbie works for MPG Ranch, a wonderful operation that supports a host of restoration and academic science. Debbie’s project? To see if she and her crew can count migrating birds by listening to their flight calls with a large array of microphones spread throughout the Bitterroot Valley. Before she and her team can start counting birds, however, they have to be able to distinguish their calls.

Birds in Bags! Birds extracted from mist nets are kept warm in bags while awaiting banding, measuring, and for a lucky few, recording.

Braden, Debbie, and I joined the University of Montana Bird Ecology banding crew at a trapping station up Miller Creek. The team had set up mist nets to capture birds, and when we arrived, the action was in full swing. A Swainson’s Thrush, Yellow-rumped Warbler, MacGillivray’s Warbler, and a surprise (to us) Northern Waterthrush kicked off the bird parade. Some of these were recaptures, as evidenced by the bands around their legs. New or recaptured, each bird was carefully removed from its net, weighed and measured, and released. Some birds, however, got special treatment.

This MacGillivray’s Warbler submits to a thorough health inspection by expert warbler wrangler Sasha Robinson before being banded, measured, and released back into the wild.

When we caught a Townsend’s Warbler, Debbie’s colleague Boo Curry (and yes, no typo there) led me and the bird to a PRS or Portable Recording Studio. The warbler was gently placed in its own soundproofed recording booth and then Boo piped in some warbler calls (a bird’s version of elevator music) to see if she could get the Townsend’s to respond.

A Townsend’s Warbler prepares to audition for Debbie’s flight call library. It passed with, ahem, flying colors.

It did! In fact, it was the team’s first successful flight call recording of the season. Which just goes to show how painstaking field biology can be. The work of Debbie’s team, though, has great promise to improve not only our counting of migrating birds, but our understanding of them. Stay tuned for more when Braden and I follow up on their progress at a later date!

Debbie’s colleague Kaitlyn shows Braden how to release a thoroughly-processed, somewhat bedraggled Ruby-crowned Kinglet.