A number of people have reached out asking for more details regarding the Mew Gull discovered at Floyd Bennett Field yesterday so I am replying here. The bird is an/the adult Mew Gull which appears to be the brachyrhynchus subspecies of western North America. It was first seen at roughly 1:35pm off low tide at the boat launch area. There were less than 25 other gulls there at the time. >From an ID standpoint, many of the characteristics that differentiate Mew Gull from Ring-billed Gull require close study, but one that stands out at distance is the broad white tertial crescent visible when the bird is at rest. In layman's terms this is the area of white at the base of the folded wings above the tail and primaries (photo in attached eBird list show side by side comparison). This block of white is almost always considerably larger than that of any Ring-billed Gull and it also creates a different pattern of gray on the wing. I think of the gray color on the wing of a RBGU as being the shape of, well, a wing, rounded at the shoulder and tapering to a point towards the tip. The large tertial crescent on the Mew Gull reduces the area of gray on the wing and creates a smaller, more parallelogram shaped block of gray. These field marks seem to be talked about the least in identification circles, yet have been what initially prompted me to investigate this gull and the 1/20 Prospect Park bird more closely. I thank Shane Blodgett for pointing them out years ago.
Checklist link with a few images : https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S43716477 For those who don't bird the area often, Brooklyn has a number of spots where gulls roost and congregate. They certainly shuffle amongst them often. My outing yesterday consisted of the typical loop I take (and depending on traffic and amount of birds is typically a 3 hour tour). All of the exact location data can be found in eBird. I did not check Prospect Lake yesterday, but being the only large body of fresh water around, gulls from all these locations potentially come in to bath. Sightings here tend to be more ephemeral in nature. Bush Terminal Piers Army Terminal Pier (58th Street) Gravesend Bay (middle lot) Gravesend Bay (Caesar's Bay) Floyd Bennett Field (boat launch) Yesterday gull numbers were down overall with the highest numbers at Bush Terminal (125) and the middle lot at Gravesend (350). Good luck if you go, Sean -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
