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Today was day one for my Gull ID class. Needless to say I was totally overwhelmed during the classroom part in the morning. But our field trip to Lake Natoma and Folsom Lake was awesome. After much searching the 1200 gulls on the ground in Granite Bay parking lot (thanks to our leader scattering popcorn) we were well paid for our patience by finding the Lesser Black-backed Gull...a rare bird for us West Coast birders and a LIFEBIRD for me! Yay!

Sunday is an all day field trip closer to the coast. Hopefully we will avoid Super Bowl traffic by being north of the Bay Area...hopefully.

What a great birding day, Farley. Stunning photo of your Lesser Black-backed Gull.
Kathryn.

That gull surely stands out in the crowd! Great picture. Enjoy your day today.

Nice find and photo! Enjoy your outing today. I'll be curious to see how many species of gull in total you see over the weekend.

That's wonderful to have gotten such a great photo of such a special bird.

what a great photo

Terrific! Even gulls can have their beauty.

I have been enjoying your photos of the gulls on here and FB. I love to watch the gulls when we're at the beach. I love to watch them dive bomb into a school of fish. You'll see many different types but I've never tried to identify them. We do have gulls with black on their backs. Not sure if it is the lesser blackbacks or not. The info does say they can be this far south.

My dad used to throw out his leftover bread for them. Somewhere I have some photos of him and my kids as children surrounded by the gulls as they were feeding them.

We're 150 miles inland and in the winter months you'll see them in the store parking lots. I've only seen them once so far this year.

Great photo! I had no idea there so many different gulls.

Gulls scare me. They're very aggressive - especially in the very touristy areas. We were at Sea World in San Diego years ago. A woman was throwing scraps into the air (entertaining herself with the gulls). A small group of them swooped in and attacked the baby carrier she had sitting on the ground looking for more food. Her infant was in the carrier with a light blanket over the baby to shield it from the sun. Luckily, there were enough adults close by to intervene. You can't blame the birds!

Humans do tend to ruin things don't they.

pamcook wrote:Great photo! I had no idea there so many different gulls.

Gulls scare me. They're very aggressive - especially in the very touristy areas. We were at Sea World in San Diego years ago. A woman was throwing scraps into the air (entertaining herself with the gulls). A small group of them swooped in and attacked the baby carrier she had sitting on the ground looking for more food. Her infant was in the carrier with a light blanket over the baby to shield it from the sun. Luckily, there were enough adults close by to intervene. You can't blame the birds!

Farley's photo has me intrigued. Now I'll be checking every flock to see if they all have the same coloring.

We have a wide variety of gulls here in NC or in the East coast

pamcook wrote:Farley's photo has me intrigued. Now I'll be checking every flock to see if they all have the same coloring.

Pam there are about 50 species in the Gull family. North America has around 22 and in California we can see a possible 17 of them at different times of the year if we're lucky. Many would be deemed rare for here like the photo of the Lesser Black-Backed I took.


Day 2 of the Gulls: 290 miles round trip. Left home at 7am and returned at 6:30pm. I went to Davis (where I met up with instructors and a few of the classmates), Petaluma, Goat Rock Beach (Jenner), Bodega Bay, Point Richmond, Point Molate and then back to Davis and home. I had a very nice guy join me in my car. I like to drive to avoid getting car sick and was glad I did after all those windy roads I drove. Gleaned an additional 5 life birds: Vega Gull (sub species of the Herring, not recognized as yet as separate but my group did:), Surf Scoter, Black Scoter (rare) Greater Scaup and Brant. It was an awesome day, clear and amazingly warm.

Keitha, I was overwhelmed by the variations of the cycles within the individual species but I'm working on it. Heck I have enough trouble with IDing the adults! But I have a new outlook and eventually I will get a better grip on it. But as our expert instructors said, they have trouble too. Our last two locations were swarming with Gulls due to the herring run. They were devouring the roe. I estimated about 9000 gulls in our last site! I think I looked at every single one of them.
I still have a pile of photos to sort through and hopefully have a few decent ones. Gee, I may even scrap this!

I find it all so fascinating!
Yes, you have to scrapbook this!

Whoa, Farley, you must have scared them off. Just back from a ride around Lake Natoma. Didn't see a single gull. Saw lots of geese and ducks, an egret or two and a heron. And some deer. But no gulls.

I composed this as I rode around so I must be honest and tell you that when I finally got around to the Aquatic Center, I finally spotted about 100 of them. But that's it.

The Placer County water rescue team was having lessons there. So perhaps they scared them off.