{"id":1001673,"date":"2008-11-16T19:45:46","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T00:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/?p=1001673"},"modified":"2008-11-16T19:45:46","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T00:45:46","slug":"450-thayers-gull-at-bolsa-chica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/birding\/2008\/11\/16\/450-thayers-gull-at-bolsa-chica\/","title":{"rendered":"#450: Thayer&#8217;s Gull at Bolsa Chica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday Jon Dunn led about a dozen volunteers from the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy  on a field ID trip to Bolsa Chica. Dunn&#8217;s a noted expert on California birds in general and gulls in particular, so we found some birds I never would have picked out without him like this first-year Thayer&#8217;s Gull:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/thayersgull.jpg\" alt=\"Immature 1st year Thayer&#039;s Gull\" title=\"thayersgull\" width=\"900\" height=\"577\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1001674\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/thayersgull.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/thayersgull-150x96.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Notice the skinny, all-black bill, pink legs, dark tail, and dark eye on a coffee-colored, scaly gull that&#8217;s the same size as the California Gull in the background. Not so obvious in this poor digiscoped photo (I just held up my camera to the scope eyepiece and prayed) is the white striping along the primaries.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Dunn also picked out another county first for me, three Greater Scaup from a flock of Lesser Scaup, which I would not have felt confident doing. I would havve (and did) notice the Snow Geese on my own (even if I did initially miscall them as Pelicans&#8211;after all, large white birds with big black patches on their wings are much more likely to be pelicans around here than geese) but I probably wouldn&#8217;t have noticed that two of them were in fact Ross&#8217;s Geese. However I did find our first Glaucous-winged Gull, and although I didn&#8217;t call it, I at least recognized it as something out of the ordinary. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/jondunnatbolsachica.jpg\" alt=\"Jon Dunn, Lena Hayashi, and other birders with scopes at Bolsa Chica\" title=\"jondunnatbolsachica\" width=\"900\" height=\"552\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1001679\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/jondunnatbolsachica.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/jondunnatbolsachica-150x92.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In three and half hours barely moving from the spit, we found over 50 species including seven gull species:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> \tHeermann&#8217;s Gull \t<\/li>\n<li>\tRing-billed Gull \t<\/li>\n<li>\tWestern Gull \t<\/li>\n<li>\tCalifornia Gull \t<\/li>\n<li>\tHerring Gull \t<\/li>\n<li> \tThayer&#8217;s Gull \t<\/li>\n<li>\tGlaucous-winged Gull \t<\/li>\n<li>  \tSnow Goose  \t<\/li>\n<li> \tRoss&#8217;s Goose \t<\/li>\n<li> \tCanada Goose \t<\/li>\n<li> \tGadwall \t<\/li>\n<li>\tAmerican Wigeon \t<\/li>\n<li> \tMallard \t<\/li>\n<li>\tCinnamon Teal \t<\/li>\n<li>\tNorthern Pintail \t<\/li>\n<li>\tGreen-winged Teal \t<\/li>\n<li> \tCanvasback \t<\/li>\n<li> \tGreater Scaup \t<\/li>\n<li>\tLesser Scaup \t<\/li>\n<li>\tBufflehead \t<\/li>\n<li>\tRed-breasted Merganser \t<\/li>\n<li>\tRuddy Duck \t<\/li>\n<li>\tPied-billed Grebe \t<\/li>\n<li>\tHorned Grebe \t<\/li>\n<li>\tEared Grebe \t<\/li>\n<li>\tWestern Grebe \t<\/li>\n<li>\tAmerican White Pelican \t<\/li>\n<li>\tBrown Pelican \t<\/li>\n<li>\tDouble-crested Cormorant \t<\/li>\n<li> \tAmerican Bittern \t<\/li>\n<li>\tGreat Blue Heron \t<\/li>\n<li>\tGreat Egret \t<\/li>\n<li>\tSnowy Egret \t<\/li>\n<li> \tReddish Egret \t<\/li>\n<li> \tOsprey \t<\/li>\n<li> \tNorthern Harrier \t<\/li>\n<li>\tAmerican Coot \t<\/li>\n<li>\tBlack-bellied Plover \t<\/li>\n<li>\tAmerican Avocet \t<\/li>\n<li>\tGreater Yellowlegs \t<\/li>\n<li>\tWillet \t<\/li>\n<li>\tLesser Yellowlegs \t<\/li>\n<li>\tLong-billed Curlew \t<\/li>\n<li>\tMarbled Godwit \t<\/li>\n<li> \tRuddy Turnstone \t<\/li>\n<li>\tRed Knot \t<\/li>\n<li>\tWestern Sandpiper \t<\/li>\n<li>\tLeast Sandpiper \t<\/li>\n<li>\tDunlin \t<\/li>\n<li>\tShort-billed Dowitcher \t<\/li>\n<li>\tLong-billed Dowitcher \t<\/li>\n<li>\tCaspian Tern \t<\/li>\n<li>\tForster&#8217;s Tern \t<\/li>\n<li>\tRoyal Tern \t<\/li>\n<li>\tRock Pigeon \t<\/li>\n<li>\tMourning Dove \t<\/li>\n<li>\tSavannah Sparrow (Belding&#8217;s) \t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday Jon Dunn led about a dozen volunteers from the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy on a field ID trip to Bolsa Chica. Dunn&#8217;s a noted expert on California birds in general and gulls in particular, so we found some birds I never would have picked out without him like this first-year Thayer&#8217;s Gull: Notice the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1001673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001673"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001681,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001673\/revisions\/1001681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}