BtGullVT2569aw.jpg (16320 bytes)Black-tailed Gull, Larus crassirostris, Charlotte Town Beach, Charlotte, Chittenden Co., VT, 23 October 2005.

All pictures were taken by Jay and McGowan and are © Jay W. McGowan and Kevin J. McGowan.  They were taken with an Olympus D-40 or Sony Cybershot digital camera through a Swarovski ATS-80 or HD80 spotting scope.

 

 

 

 


Discovered on 18 October 2005 by Julie Hart and identified by Matt Medler, this rare Asian gull put on quite a show for birders on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain.  We photographed it on a dreary Sunday five days later.  On the previous night it flew out into the lake to roost, but unfortunately for us, did not go anywhere near New York waters.

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Note the dark horizontal lines through the tertials, wing coverts, and scapulars.  These appear to me to be fault bars, indicating a fairly severe nutritional stress encountered while growing these feathers.  Such strong fault bars on so many feathers, while commonly seen in hatch-year birds, are rare in adult birds in my experience.  To me they suggest that this adult-looking bird had a hard time this last summer, but I guess we could have figured that out just by where he ended up in the fall.


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Revised: November 08, 2005.