Thayer’s Gull, South Portland, ME, February 2014

As the weekend neared there were two great gulls to chase in New England – a Mew Gull in CT, and one or maybe 2 Thayer’s Gulls in ME.  The Mew Gull was only the second ever record for CT so I decided that one should be my priority.  Luckily I was able to find the Mew on my first try (see my previous blog post), so now I could focus on Thayer’s in ME.  One bird labeled as “Thayer’s-like” had been around for a couple weeks more than 3 hours away in Fairfield, ME.  Not surprisingly the distance and the less-than-definitive ID meant I wasn’t too willing to go after that one.  But a week later a Thayer’s was found both at the Portland waterfront and a short distance away in South Portland, just a 2-hour drive away.  This bird appeared to be a good ID, with dark wing tips though with a mantle that was paler than most.  With the Mew Gull out of the way, the Portland bird was my next focus.

Denny Abbott and I headed to Portland early in the morning, arriving at the Portland Fishing Pier by shortly after 9.  It took a while to find a place to park, and then even longer to find locations to view the water without getting in the way of active fishing operations.  Shortly after we got to a good viewing location we began to find white-winged gulls – first a couple immature Icelands, then a first year Glaucous.  Then we found a couple adult Icelands and better yet an adult Glaucous.  Most all of these birds seemed to be hanging around the site, coming back to just about their same exact perches after flying off for short periods of time.  And all the while there were a small number of large gulls in the air, many passing directly overhead.  Interestingly we never saw a single white-winged gull in any of those overhead birds, though the “local” white-wings represented at least 10% of the birds perched nearby.  But despite our success with the white-wings we didn’t see any candidates for a Thayer’s.  So after about 90 minutes, we decided to head to the South Portland site where the Thayer’s had also been reported.

Although it took us about 15 minutes to drive over to Mill Creek in South Portland, it was at most a minute away as the gull flies from the Portland Fishing Pier which we could see in the distance.  When we arrived we could see only about 100 gulls sitting at the Mill Creek estuary, but we quickly started picking out white-winged gulls.  And all the gulls were only a short distance – identifiable with just binoculars.  We counted 9 Iceland and 2 Glaucous Gulls within the first couple minutes of our arrival.  There was some movement of birds to and from this site, and in fact we watched a couple fly from Mill Creek directly to the Fishing Pier across the harbor.  And although there were never more than 100 gulls there at any time, we kept picking up different white-wings.  At one point Denny picked out a very dark “white-wing”, which we studied at close distance in our scopes.  It had exceptionally dark secondaries, dark tail band, and dark mantle with extensive mottling.  And the primaries were dark as well.  With its wings spread we saw that the outer 5 primaries had darker outer half and paler inner half, and the inner primaries were paler overall.  All very good features for a Thayer’s.  It flew off and landed on a distant pier, where I got these miserable phonescoped photos. 

In both of these pictures the wingtips look paler than the mantle, but what appears to be the paler wingtips are actually the inner primaries - looking at this bird through a scope showed that the outer/darker primaries are drooping lower and are barely visible in the photos.  But these outer primaries were only as dark as the mantle, not darker than the mantle as suggested in most field guides.  Couldn’t this have been because the mantle was so dark?  Like I said the photos aren't the best, so likely not good enough to identify this one, but sure seems like it could have been a Thayer’s.  But it was not the pale-mantled bird reported at this spot previously. 

We then turned our attention back to the Mill Creek estuary to look through the gulls some more.  One of the first birds I picked out was an adult white-winged gull with quite dark wing tips, though with pale eyes.  That made it an Iceland, but a really dark one.  I then started counting white-winged gulls to get a new tally when I spotted a first-year bird with dark wing tips and pale mantle – it was the Thayer’s reported earlier.  It must have flown in while we were looking at the possible Thayer’s in the distance.  The mantle was quite pale - either washed out or molting into 2nd year plumage, with a dark tail band, wing tips, and secondaries.  I got these phonescoped photos where I was lucky enough to catch the bird with its wings spread, showing the primaries, secondaries, and tail.

And these were my best photos of the bird sitting.  It was interesting that the mantle was so pale that most of these photos were overexposed.  And note that the primaries of this bird were just as dark as the primaries of the first darker bird that we found.

Did you find Icelands and/or Glaucous Gulls in each picture?

Thayer’s Gull was number 328 for me in Maine which is now my 15^th state for Thayer’s (see my statebird map below).  Four of my five new statebirds in New England so far in 2014 have been gulls.  And with five new birds so early in the year it’s starting to look like a good 2014 for me in New England.  If I could keep up this pace, with just 41 to go to get to 2000 in New England, I’d reach my goal much faster than I expected.