Birding Dec 27

I did another birding day, where I spend WAY too much time driving around, and not enough time looking at birds. I'm not going to go into too much detail as to where I went, but the best bird in the first half of the day was a Snow Goose east of Rock Point on Lake Erie:

I then spent some time looking (and somehow managing to photograph) gulls:

Click for a bigger image. Above: on left, adult Great Black-backed X Herring Gull hybrid. With Ring-billed Gull (middle) and Herring Gull (right). Note the large GBBG-ish size with mantle intermediate between parent species.

Juv. Thayer's Gull on the control gates wall - Niagara Falls, with adult Herrings below. 

View from Adam Beck. Note the gulls in the above photo. At dusk there were 10/15 Iceland, 3+ Glaucous, 2 Thayer's Gulls, 3 Lesser Black-backed, 1 Herring x Great Black-back, and 1 Herring X Lesser Black-backed  gulls hanging around at Adam Beck. 

Earlier in the day I had encountered a strange feeding swarm of Large white-headed Gulls, and mallards. See the Juv. Iceland Gull in the above photo for an example. It was a tight swarm, close to the side of the road, so I watched from the car! Turning up the Iceland, a Lesser Black-back, and a few Glaucous (see below). Strange bunch!

2nd basic Glaucous Gull from the above swarm. Glaucous Gulls had clearly "arrived" recently, with 7 birds seen in my limited stops on the river. 

Presumed Hybrid gull (orange arrow in above photo) at Adam Beck. Note how the mantle is darker than the nearby Ring-billed and Herring gulls, but only a shade or two. It was a large bird, and I can only assume it was mostly a Herring Gull with a grandparent that was probably a Great Black-backed Gull... 

Two photos of the presumed Lesser Black-backed X Herring Gull hybrid (adult). Note in the above photo how the underside of the feet are pink, but above (2nd photo) - the feet look yellowish/pink! Never noticed that on a bird before. Mantle is a little too pale for the average Lesser Black-back, and the bird was a bit smaller than the average Herring Gull... 

Adult Lesser Black-backed Gull added for good measure. 

Plan on returning to the river sometime soon... I don't understand why every time I go to the river, I see more hybrid and uncommon gulls than most other people, but rarely seem to find the true rarities like California, Slaty-backed, Mew etc etc ???

Ok, now I have to go do some sort of "real" work!