January 17th, 2006. East Providence, RI.
| Mew Gull Larus (canus) - form uncertain. (Adult winter).
| Today I traveled south to view the
Mew Gull found by Carlos Pedro on January 6th. Thanks to very good directions given on the Rhode Island RBA, I was soon
at Watchemoket Cove in East Providence. After about twenty minutes the
Mew Gull flew in from the river and began bathing with Ring-billed
Gulls. Shortly afterwards it flew onto the ice and rested for the next
two hours with a distant, tight flock of Ring-billed Gulls. It wasn't until late
afternoon that the bird became more active and began feeding in the
cove at low tide, this time close to the East Bay bike path. It was here,
together with Rachel Farrell, that we had some exceptional views at
close range.
This bird was rather darker
on the upperparts than I expected, and also lacked any sign of a well demarcated mark around
the bill. In addition, the bill and legs appeared especially bright
yellowish, much more so than I would have expected in mid-winter, at least for L.c. canus.
Although intially identified as referring to the American form brachyrhynchus,
I understand that some discussion has been taking place over the
identification. I'm not too surprised by this as the bird, while no
doubt a Mew Gull, has several characters that seem at odds with either canus or brachyrhynchus.
I'll
be adding updates to this story as and when they come in, but in the
mean time I just wanted to post some images of this exciting bird.
This, by the way, is apparently the first documented record of a Mew
Gull for Rhode
Island.
Comments on January 19th:
This bird has stimulated a great deal of interest over the last three
days. I don’t want to list all the emails that I’ve received on this
subject just yet, but suffice to say, the overwhelming pool of opinion is
to leaning towards ‘Kamchatka’ Gull. However, one expert feels that the bird’s features may still be within the range of a fairly large, dark ‘Common’ Gull (L. c. canus/heinei).
I fully expect the bird to well seen by many birders this coming
weekend. Hopefully the debate will be enhanced with additional comments
resulting from direct field observations.
| Images taken using Canon Powershot A-95 through Swarovski telescope
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