Sometimes it does, sometimes not.
I spent my first "day in the condo" - in the condo - for a while... Specifically, I figured out I had worked (work work) 26 of the past 29 days... So it was glorious to spend some time at home!
The birds - were rather ugly.
Late in the day I picked out an unusual young gull harassing scoters. Stood out as a pale head/necked bird with a dark body/wings. It was mostly in 1st basic plumage (having molted from juvenile already). If by some stroke of luck it turned out to be in the "Lesser Black-backed Clan" of gull - the molt timing would be a dead ringer for Yellow-legged Gull (no Ontario records).
Worth watching, right???
Eventually it took flight and circled around over the lake. It actually flew rather close to my place and I nabbed some photos:
Wings looked dark! Interesting...
Tail looked - missing???
Anyways, long story short - it looked ugly. It eventually landed close to Green Rd. so I decided to go downstairs and bring a "bag-o-bread" to the end of the road and get some serious pictures of the beast to figure out what was happening...
Somehow I had continued luck with the bread and coaxed the beast in close. It continued to look odd - even looking rather small-ish in stature (larger than Ring-billed, small end for Herring)
So what did I decide?
I decided it's probably just an ugly-arse young Herring Gull... Who really knows, but it sure doesn't look like anything "good" !
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I've been enjoying scanning through an ever expanding group of scoters (all 3 species) when I have some spare time each morning... Over the past several days there has been a revolving door of guests like Bufflehead, Wigeon, Pintail, Redhead, Scaup, Green-winged Teal, Ring-necked Ducks etc
A highlight today was my first patch/condo RUDDY DUCK - who joined in on the fun... At least until some joy-riders scared them all away.
Also had a Great Egret flyby - but not really much of note otherwise...
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Back on Saturday Ken Burrell and I birded the condo/patch for the morning as well... A combined ebird checklist here:
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Hopefully some rarities will surface in the coming weeks! I hope to be around home a fair bit to take advantage of the condo-watching for the next 4-6 weeks ;)
Also: Gray Kingbird in Quebec:
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