Matt: Lisa and I saw what I am certain was the same bird when we were at Lapidum around 1:30 or 2pm on Saturday. It had dark coming in on the hood, but white on forehead. I picked it out by scope floating across the river off Port Deposit, just upriver (west?) of the marina in a loose line of other gulls, mostly Bonies and Ring-Billeds. As you say, none of the Bonies had any black coming in. But given the distance, we were uncertain of the ID of this other bird and thought it might be a Bonie too. We did not see the bird fly.
Having been at Port Deposit an hour earlier, we instead went to Papermill Flats for the Black-Headed Gull that ... wasn't there when we arrived. ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGH! It was that kind of a weekend, birding-wise.
Good Birding
Warren & Lisa Strobel
Annapolis, MD
www.birdcouple.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Maryland Birds & Birding on behalf of Matt Hafner
Sent: Sun 2/27/2011 1:06 PM
To:
Subject: [MDOSPREY] Black-headed Gull at Port Deposit/Lapidum
I found an adult Black-headed Gull from Lapidum this morning, though it was much closer to the Cecil shoreline. It was south of Port Deposit, but the line of gulls it was with stretched north to town.
From Lapidum, it was only easy to identify when flying and the black undersides to the primaries were visible. However, it was really easy to pick out when sitting since it has a nearly complete hood (it does have white on the forehead just above the bill). There were 12 Bonies that I saw today and none of them had started molting in hoods. It is typical for Black-headeds to gain full hoods weeks in advance of Bonaparte's.
Jim Brighton and Ron Gutberlet arrived not long after I found and were able to see it a couple times in flight as well. We did not see the Red-necked Grebe, but Jim did spot a Greater Scaup just south of Lapidum.
Good birding!
Matt Hafner
Forest Hill
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