The answer to Shai's question on juvenile Laughing Gulls is yes! I have seen
several on the East Pond with my last few visits along with a few crisp looking
Juv Herring Gulls as well.
The possible Little Egret sighting, is quite intriguing and I agree about the
apparent lack of effort in trying to track the possible whereabouts of that
bird when it went missing. Alas, these days it appears birding....at least to
my observation has become more reactionary to eBird Alerts rather than the
search itself.
Cheers,
風 Swift as the wind
林 Quiet as the forest
火 Conquer like the fire
山 Steady as the mountain
Sun Tzu The Art of War
> (\__/)
> (= '.'=)
> (") _ (")
> Sent from somewhere in the field using my mobile device!
Andrew Baksh
www.birdingdude.blogspot.com
> On Jul 30, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Shaibal Mitra <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On the evening of Saturday, 25 July, Patricia Lindsay and I boarded the
> "Moon Chaser" for an old-fashioned Wilson Brothers Band Brews Cruise of Fire
> Island Inlet. Pat didn't even have her binoculars, but I had mine, and I
> scanned the marsh north of the Captree boat basin in an effort to find her an
> elusive Tricolored Heron for her year list. What I found was an egret that
> strongly reminded me of the Little Egret present at nearby Gardiner County
> Park in late May: long black bill, flat crown, and an angular nape lacking
> any visible plumes; and the lores appeared dark, so that the eye through the
> bill looked continuously dark. I showed the bird to Pat, and also to Holly
> Wilson and Phillip Camhi, and they all agreed with the impressions just
> described. Taking my turn with the binoculars again, I watched the bird rise
> and fly out of sight to the north, revealing all-black legs and bright yellow
> feet, indicative of an adult. Although the circumstances of our views were
> far from ideal, I have a hard time seeing an adult Snowy Egret with dark
> lores and and lacking a bushy, rounded nape, and furthermore standing stately
> and lanky-looking, as this bird had. The passage of two months could account
> for the loss of the two long head plumes and a shift from orange to yellow
> foot color. I mentioned our expererience to some local birders but saw little
> point in posting it unless we were able to nail it down--especially given the
> disappointingly limpid follow up searches back in May, after the bird first
> went missing.
>
> When I returned to Captree today, I did not find the egret of interest (nor
> the Tricolor), but I did see something that surprised me: at least three
> brand-new juvenile Laughing Gulls, well out to the east of Sexton Island, in
> bad light. For years now we southwestern Suffolk County birders have
> suspected that Laughing Gulls were breeding in the Captree/Sexton/East/West
> Fire Island area of Great South Bay, based on the regular early spring
> arrival here of birds in high breeding plumage, earlier than and inland from
> our ocean-hugging passage migrants.
>
> While pondering these things, a Royal Tern flew over heading east with a
> begging juv in tow, reminding me that it is by no means too early for juv
> Laughing Gulls to disperse east from Jamaica Bay. But it has been my
> impression that fledging there is late this year (I saw no juvs on my twice
> daily commutes on the Belt Parkway through 21 July). On a hunch, I drove over
> to Orowoc Lake in Islip, an epicenter of the sort of early spring LAGU
> activity has been making us curious, and was delighted to see a juvenile
> Laughing Gull fly in--surely one of the most beautiful birds in the world.
>
> So, have folks been seeing juvs around Jamaica Bay lately? Does anyone know
> of actual nesting evidence in Great South Bay?
>
> Shai Mitra
> Bay Shore
>
> ________________________________
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