VA-Birders,
Today my wife suggested we go to the Potomac Mills mall in Woodbridge for
some Christmas shopping. On the way there, I had a brainstorm. I realized
that the mall is near the PW landfill so I dropped her and headed over there
for about an hour to try to refind and photograph the Black-headed Gull we
found yesterday.
I could not find the bird again, but it was later and there were fewer
Laughing Gulls around, with which it seemed to associate yesterday. I did
manage to find at least one first winter ICELAND GULL - I believe there are
two, as I kept finding the bird(s) at seemingly opposite sides of the landfill
within minutes of each other, but could never get on both at the same time to
be certain. There was also the adult LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL that is likely
the same one that has been around for the past couple of weeks.
I did get some OK pictures of the Iceland Gull(s) with my (wife's) new
camera, the Nikon Coolpix S4, which has 10x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom.
It did a nice job, but I could not initially get close enough to the target
birds to get good, high-quality photographs. I then remembered that folks have
some fun digiscoping, so I held the camera up to my scope after finding an
Iceland Gull and managed to get off some decent shots. The camera lens and the
opening to my scope are a good fit, and it wasn't even planned! With a little
practice, this could work nicely to get the shots I want.
Take Care,
Jay Keller
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