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Again and again it strikes me how much Jericho Beach reminds me of Mount Auburn–without the dead bodies, of course, and with a much better gull selection.<\/p>\n
I don’t have my lists at hand, but I’m pretty much certain that my larid list for the Massachusetts cemetery comprises three species: Great Black-backed, American Herring, and Ring-billed Gulls. Without any of those three, this morning’s Jericho Beach walk produced four species.<\/p>\n
Four species–depending on how you count ’em. Sooner or later I’m going to have to come to terms with the pugetensis <\/em>problem. Our most abundant gull here in Vancouver is Glaucous-winged Gull<\/strong>, or at least birds that look more or less like Glaucous-winged, with pale upperparts and blue-gray wingtips (whence the name).<\/p>\n An awful lot of those birds, however, have wingtips that are slightly too dark for a classic Glaucous-wing, suggesting that somewhere on not too high a branch in their family tree perches an American Herring or Western Gull. Some of them have primaries so sooty as even to be mistaken for one of those species.<\/p>\n I try to look at such birds when I can, but until this morning hadn’t run across anything overly convincing. Then, while I was watching my first Bonaparte’s Gulls <\/strong>of the spring off the beach, in came this beauty.<\/p>\n When it landed on the pier–in less than ideal light, unfortunately–the dark upperparts and broad secondary “skirt” were obvious.<\/p>\n Those features plus the black wingtip and very bright bill left me satisfied that if this wasn’t a pure Western Gull<\/strong>, then it was at least so near the dark end of the hybrid spectrum as to make its mixed ancestry undetectible.<\/p>\n The bird was aggressive, and I had some excellent comparative views of its upperpart color with the paler mantles of the Glaucous-wings in flight; this, sadly, is the best photo I got of the combination.<\/p>\n Pretty exciting, and a state (uh, sorry: province, eh?) bird for me. Short of putting the blird in a bender and dipping in some litmus paper–or whatever the scientists do–we’ll never know whether miscegenation lurks in its ancestral past, but I found it pretty convincing. [But see here for my later recanting.<\/em>]<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n And the day’s fourth gull species? No surprises there: Mew Gull<\/strong>. There are relatively few around right now, but one fine adult was on the first pond with the ducks.<\/p>\n I especially like this picture and the way it shows the smudgy “shawl” on the hindneck, already lost at this time of year on most adult Mew Gulls.<\/p>\n I still don’t have a handle at all <\/em>on distinguishing these “Short-billed” Gulls from Common and Kamchatka Gulls, though apparently the pale eye is a good indication that I didn’t miss a major vagrant.<\/p>\n More gulls tomorrow, I hope!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Again and again it strikes me how much Jericho Beach reminds me of Mount Auburn–without the dead bodies, of course, and with a much better gull selection. I don’t have my lists at hand, but I’m pretty much certain that my larid list for the Massachusetts cemetery comprises three species: Great Black-backed, American Herring, and … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4023\/4521650506_ed1f826515.jpg\")
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