ML83542031

Age and sex

Immature Unknown sex - X

Tags

Field notes/sketch

Media notes

Sketch made on 16 January.

Observation details

I finally re-found the bird that I had seen on 25 December flying over Wallace Young¿s house. It was sitting on an exposed mud flat with 2 Laughing Gulls next to the road. In size, it appeared to be slightly larger than the Laughing Gulls, but the size difference was more in extra bulk than in length; it may have been the same length. The bird was in heavily worn plumage and had a very labored flight with rapid wingbeats barely sufficient to keep it aloft. My guess is that it is in its first winter but never completely molted out of juvenal plumage (see description of tail, wing coverts). Most heavily worn were its wing coverts and scapulars which were bleached white and hardly more than feather shafts with very frayed veins. The flight feathers were less worn. Its moderately slender bill was pale pinkish on the basal 1/2 - 2/3, black on the distal third with the extreme tip pale. The black was sharply set off from the rest of the bill. Its eye was dark, and it appeared to have a small dark smudge immediately in front of the eye. Legs were dull pinkish gray. Its head, neck and underparts were white. The tips of the feathers on its head and neck appeared dirty but were actually tipped pale dusky. Its back was medium gray, about 1½ shades paler than the gray of the Laughing Gulls. Its primaries were dull black without paler edges or shafts. Its tail pattern was more complex, white in the basal half and black in the distal half. In the ¿black¿ portion of the tail, the outer rectrices were dull black (actually very dark gray) with fine, fairly widely spaced jet black barring. The black barring extended across the central rectrices; however, the background color was white with some additional black flecking (see illustration). This pattern does not quite fit a typical Ring-billed Gull in 1st or 2nd winter, and may actually be the pattern of juvenal plumage (I will have to check my gull references in the States). In flight, it appeared that the inner primaries were paler and the secondaries paler still; thus the appearance of a broad dark triangle in the outer wing. The rump was white.

Technical information

Model

iPhone 6 Plus

Lens

iPhone 6 Plus back camera 4.15mm f/2.2

ISO

40

Focal length

4.2 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/2.2

Shutter speed

1/120 sec

Dimensions

1152 pixels x 1027 pixels

Original file size

225.42 KB