Hi -
Sounds like a good day.
A straight cutoff between black tip and pink shaft on HY Glaucous Gull is one
of those field guide simplifications that is not literally accurate, and that
sometimes confuses birders.
If you look at the photos in Olsen and Larsson, for example, none look quite
like they were "dipped in black paint." Most show black extending a couple mm
further up on the lower sheath than on the upper, and on each sheath, the
margin is slightly to considerably curved.
What signals hybrid ancestry is a black smear in along the cutting edge that
extends at least a distance comparable to the bill depth, and often half way so
so to the bill base.
Wayne
On 1/22/2017 7:50:11 AM, David Mandell <davidmandell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I spent the morning birding Tillamook with Wink and Becki. There was an
enormous number of ducks behind the high school – mostly Pintails and Widgeon
(with 4-5 male EURASIANs in the mix). We also found a SWAMP SPARROW and O-C
WARBLER there. In the afternoon, I headed over to Nehalem. The sewage ponds
had had the expected mix of ducks (LESSER SCAUP, SHOVELER, RUDDY DUCK, G-W
TEAL) in not particularly impressive numbers. There was one male teal that
lacked a vertical white stripe and had only a hint of a horizontal one. A
single gull sat on the dike – a first year GLAUCOUS GULL (the bill pattern was
pretty good, but not an absolutely straight line in the cut-off between the
black tip and the bright pink rest of the bill, so I imagine a case for some
intergrade could be made). The meadows are pretty flooded and there are a
scattering of flocks of geese, include one solid flock of 12 SNOW GEESE. I
couldn’t find a close vantage point to the geese, but could see them in the
distance from the sewage ponds and then from the SE corner of the meadows. I
then took a quick pick at Nehalem State Park. From the boat ramp, I spotted a
distant female/imm. LONG-TAILED DUCK hanging out with the Surf Scoters.
David Mandell
