Friday, March 3, 2017

Gull Mania on the St. Clair River

It has been a good winter for viewing lots of gulls on the St. Clair River.  More recently, and especially this week, there have been thousands of gulls on the river!  With the arrival of Ring-billed Gulls and northbound gulls, the river has been littered with gulls in various locations.
Yesterday at Port Lambton on my morning watch before work, there were about 700 Ring-billed Gulls as well as a few others.
There were not as many today, but I added an Iceland.

Sarnia Bay and the north end of Corunna have been hotspots, so I headed up that way after getting off work a bit early.
It was mayhem at Guthrie Park and the outlet of Talfourd Creek off Shell Oil! My photos do not do the situation justice as I only had the Canon G16.




Thousands of Herring Gulls were on the river (mostly floating/swimming), while many Ring-billed were closer to shore.




I picked out a couple of Lesser Black-backed and a few Iceland and Glaucous.



Thayer's-type gulls have been around too.
Even the Herring X Great Black-backed was out today.  Strangely, only a couple of Great Black-backed Gulls were here during my hour stay.  There were lots of gulls on the US side as well.



One would think an Ivory Gull would be around....oh.....there was, but it was in Essex County!  It is a beauty (a photo is on eBird by James Frith).

After an hour at Guthrie Park, I headed up to Sarnia Bay.  There were lots of gulls there too including more Iceland and Glaucous, as well as many Great Black-backed.  I did not have a scope with me and many gulls were on the docks in the marina. That coupled with the fading light made for an inaccurate count.
Now is the time to get your fill of gulls!


2 comments:

  1. I wonder if that Ivory Gull is one-in-the-same with the famous Trampoline Ivory Gull from Ohio? http://blog.aba.org/2016/02/rare-bird-alert-february-19-2016.html

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    1. It could have bounced over this way (from Wisconsin)!

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