[texbirds] How far away can you identify a bird? Black-legged Kittiwake
- From: Clay Taylor <Clay.Taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:23:12 -0500
Hi all -
A few anecdotes about the Port Aransas Black-legged Kittiwake from yesterday
(2/24/13).
1) About 8am, while Joel Simon and I were at the end of the Shipping
Channel South Jetty (looking in vain for a passing Razorbill), I swung my
spotting scope around to look at the Horace Caldwell Pier to see if the
Kittiwake was perched on the railing. The first two times, it was not, then
later there it was! The bird was facing into the wind, so it was head-on to
us, but when it started preening I could see the black neck-collar.
This morning I went on Google Earth and used the measuring function, and we
were precisely 0.98 miles apart - that's pretty good.
2) As Joel and I were walking back to the parking lot, we stopped about
2/3 of the way in to maybe get a better look at the bird, and three birders had
just arrived at the end of the pier and were looking at the kittiwake. I
popped my Pentax K5 on the scope, cranked up the ISO and zoomed it up to 70x
and fired off some pictures. As I was doing that, the bird flew off the
railing and looped under the pier, and the images clearly show all the field
marks. Google Earth said that we were 0.75 miles away. I will post a few
photos on the TexBirds FaceBook page.
3) After the Whooping Crane Festival closed for the day, I went over to
the beach to see if there were any Bonaparte's Gulls and possibly Little Gulls
sitting on the beach (few and none, respectively). However, I did spot the
Black-legged Kittiwake sitting by itself on the sand. It must have been
recovering from the fishing pole whipping it took earlier in the day. Ooohh,
nice! A few Laughing gulls landed nearby, and I was amazed to see that while
the two gulls were about the same overall length and height, the kittiwake was
MUCH thicker in the chest and body. At a distance, it looked decidedly
"bigger". While I have seen a few kittiwakes sitting on land over the years,
this was the first time I had seen one close to other gulls. Very interesting.
Clay Taylor
TOS Life Member
Calallen (Corpus Christi), TX
Clay.taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:Clay.taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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