ML129091101

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Tags

Field notes/sketch

Media notes

Photo of my notes written at the time here (notes above composed shortly afterward and transcribed here the following day)

Observation details

Extremely rare locally (inland locality) and perhaps record early date for Maine (first reported this year?). This bird was standing and preening in the pasture north of Rt 104/139. It was adjacent to an adult Herring Gull and a few Ring-billeds nearby. I studied this bird with my Leica scope and 32x lens (image bright and sharp). I spotted the bird while quickly scanning the massive gull flock. The bird's full black head and dark mantle stood out. It was about the size or a bit larger than the nearby Ring-billed Gulls. The black head was a full hood, showing no indication of contracting upward around the nape. The bottom border of the the hood showed a few white feathers, making the bottom border not completely neat and clean. White eye arcs were obvious. The underparts were clean and pure white (no pink). The mantle was dark, slate gray, appearing exactly as expected for a Laughing Gull. The rather longish looking wings showed black primaries with narrow white tips on at least a couple proximal primaries (distal-most primaries appeared to be black to tip). As the bird ruffled its wings while preening, I could see that the black on the primaries was extensive both dorsally and ventrally. (I was keen to make this into a Franklin's Gull, which I thought perhaps more likely at this inland locality in early April!). The bill was mostly black in appearance, but showed some reddish-brown patterning along its sides; bill shape was longish, being somewhat more robust than the nearby Ring-billed Gulls. As the bird scratched, I could see the legs were dark blackish-red (overall very dark). In view for several minutes, I failed to grab my camera, choosing instead to study the bird. When I turned to get my camera, something flushed many of the hundreds of gulls, and I lost the bird. Repeated scans failed to turn it up, although many birds were already departing the area in a large flock, heading southeast toward Waterville. I scanned the flying birds too without refinding the Laughing Gull. This species normally arrives in Maine during the last few days of April (earliest in mid-April), but that may be a more recent pattern, with early May being the usual time of arrival. This is a very rare bird inland in Maine, with a couple following Hurricane Irene in late August/early September last year (2011). There is a weak pattern of very early birds also being inland. In fact, Palmer (1949) notes his earliest specimen record was one he shot at Stillwater (=Old Town) 4 May 1937 well up the Penobscot River. More recently, there is a 1 April 2006 record of a breeding plumage Laughing Gull inland at the Exeter Wastewater Treatment Plant, New Hampshire (S. Mirick, eBird list here: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S5023997). There have been some other early-mid April inland Laughing Gulls in New Hampshire, and the species has occurred up the Hudson River in the Albany region by late March. A possible explanation for this species occurrence here is a low that has been stalled over eastern Maine/New Brunswick, which has been circulating there for several days now. It is possible that many gulls migrating north offshore now have been caught up in that disturbance and drawing inland or downed. There have been many Laughing Gulls (up to 15 or so) noted at the tip of Cape Cod over the past week. These may include birds headed north as well as local arrivals.

Technical information

Model

Canon EOS 7D

ISO

200

Focal length

100 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/9.0

Shutter speed

1/80 sec

Dimensions

2818 pixels x 4416 pixels

Original file size

2.04 MB