Greetings...
From about one-thirty this afternoon until three-thirty I was at Prince
William County Landfill, just off of Route 234 a few miles from I-95.
There were thousands of gulls present, but not the numbers that I recall from
last winter. I'd put a number of 5000 on today's flock. Both of the above
mentioned gulls were found after three PM. The California was an adult bird,
seen well for perhaps five minutes. It was feeding actively in the trash
that was being pushed around by the heavy equipment, constantly jostling
among the Ring-billeds and Herrings. They were packed in pretty densely in a
small area.
The first winter Glaucous Gull was found in the general area of the
California, but seen before I found the California. It ended up moving a bit
closer to me and allowed careful study. That said, I'm still not 100% sure
this was a Glaucous Gull. I was able to photograph it, and hopefully the
slides will turn out OK and remove the doubt. What bothered me about this
bird was that the head was a bit more round than I've seen on previous GLGU,
and the bill appeared all dark, though it wasn't easy to discern whether that
was from caked on mud or not. Overall the bird was a bit darker than I've
seen on GLGU, and a bit more patterned.
Five other species of gull were seen, with probably 4000 or more being
Ring-billeds, 750 or so Herring, 150 Laughing Gulls (only one first winter),
100 Great Black-backed Gulls, and one third winter Lesser Black-backed. I
was surprised at how few LBBG there were.
Also of note was a single Common Raven.
For anyone keeping score, the California was 341.
Cheers...
Todd
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Todd M. Day
Jeffersonton, VA
Culpeper County
BlkVulture@xxxxxxx
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