[Bristol-Birds] A gull of a day in Buchanan County

You just never know where a bird is going to turn up! While making my evening 
bus run I see,up ahead, a pigeon-sized, mostly white  bird that sits in the 
road until I'm right on top of it. I can plainly see the pale gray back & 
unmarked wings, white tail & head with a little dark mark behind the dark eye. 
As the bird flies up in front of the bus I can see white on the trailing edge 
of the pale gray wings. This sighting of a Ross's Gull occurred on the Breaks 
side of Bull Mt. in Buchanan County. I drove back up to try to relocate the 
bird but failed to find it again. While scanning the area on my return home, I 
noticed some birds near the small pond at Willowbrook Country Club. A closer 
look proved them to be 13 Ring-billed Gulls. While these are very common for 
you East Tennesseans they are very rare in our neck of the woods! These gulls 
were about fifty feet from the county line. Maybe tomorrow they'll be in 
Dickinson County.

David Raines
Breaks,VA

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