ML388148851

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Found by Janet Carle yesterday afternoon, November 13. Nice find, Janet! This second year bird was feeding alone at the Rush Creek delta. A generally sooty-gray-brown gull, evenly patterned with long black primaries reaching the tail tip. The orange red bill had a black distal tip. The most distinctive plumage feature that seemed to stand out were the pale-tipped scapular crescents and tertials. Black legs had no bands. The head looked slightly darker than the body. We entered on the access road on the west side of the Delta, and as we approached in morning light the glare was awful. We scoped from the bluff on the west side of Rush Creek where you park your car. At first we could not see the bird because it was hidden by a gravel berm. It was on the east side of the creek and walking further away. We walked down the sandy bluff to the gravel very slowly. We owe a thanks to Jon Dunn for teaching us to patiently “halve the distance” to a bird by approaching slowly, and stopping frequently, so the bird gets used to you. We try to always behave this way, even though today it wasn’t necessary because the bird was so far away, but we did it anyway. When we finally got down to the gravel bar on the west side, the bird was walking towards us. Then it flew straight at us landing close by. If that wasn’t enough, it continued walking towards us, passed us by, and walked west quite a distance until it was underneath the bluff where our car was parked. It was always feeding and it looked to us like it was picking up flies. For about the first half hour, the Heermann’s Gull and an American Coot were the only birds on the beach. Later two California Gulls joined them and some distant Eared Grebes. One more note. Parts of the shallow lagoon that the bird walked through were frozen with a thin layer of ice. As the bird walked, it would slip gracefully on the ice with each step. We wondered how many times a Heermann’s Gull has ever walked on ice.

Technical information

Model

DSC-HX400V

Lens

4.3-215mm f/2.8-6.3

ISO

80

Focal length

215 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/500 sec

Dimensions

5184 pixels x 3888 pixels

Original file size

4.99 MB