I think it was 13 of us joined forces to put eyes on the gulls at the Wastepath
landfill yesterday. Over the course of several hours, we were successful in
finding six species of gulls there, although the best one, the hide-and-seek
adult Great Black-backed Gull, was only seen by one person before it vanished .
. .
Highlights were at least three and maybe four first-year Glaucous Gulls, at
least three "Iceland Gulls," a second-year intermediate (Kumlien's/Thayers?)
bird I think only I saw in flight, a pretty standard first-year Thayer's type,
and a very pretty first-year Kumlien's type that we actually saw three times,
including on it's way to the roost out on the north end of Ky Lake late in the
day. We had at least eight Lesser Black-backeds, although it continues to be
difficult to get an accurate tally because of all the trading around that
occurs. The adult Great Black-backed put in an occurrence up on the disposal
site, but soon disappeared and could not be relocated. There should be nice
pics of some of the rarer gulls on various eBird lists by Clay, Tommy, James,
and Ruben.
Other interesting observations from the landfill included a flyover Lapland
Longspur (heard), at least one Fish Crow (it/they might be wintering in the
vicinity), and at least six Bald Eagles along the nearby Tennessee River.
I have been curious what would be the pattern of activity during the weekend,
and I *think* we learned one thing ... without much if any activity on the
disposal site, the birds loaf around and feed some in the morning, but they
start to disperse during the afternoon (although we had some of our nicest
study of some of the rarer birds during the afternoon when numbers had thinned
out). From what everyone is seeing, it seems activity remains high throughout
the week days when disposal is ongoing and there is lots of feeding activity.
Over at Ky Dam, we found the Red-necked Grebe that has been in the area and saw
a first-year Lesser Black-backed Gull below the dam with 85 Herrings. Not a
great array of divers on the lake, but one flock of about 70 Redheads was nice.
Down on the Sledd Creek embayment we added Bonaparte's Gull for our seventh
gull species, and had *five* more Lesser Black-backed Gulls.
We attempted to see the Brown-headed Nuthatches at the Sheriff's Ranch but came
up empty, a somewhat disappointing trend in recent months. I would like to ask
folks again to *refrain* from attempting audio-playback on these birds. They
have not been very hard to find in recent years by just spending a little time
walking around in the pines. More recent difficulty in locating them might not
be related to using audio lures to draw them in, but with this remaining the
only long-term nesting location in the state for them, I think we should err on
the side of caution.
BPB, Louisville
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