Shades of Gray (and Pink, and Dusky)

After last weekend’s marathon dip (see the last blog post), I had sworn off long distance chases forever. That was until the Gray Gull continued all week and was still being seen Saturday. In fact, pictures had surfaced of the bird in its first alternate plumage from a nearby beach in June. My friends Jack and Garrett twisted my arm, and we made plans to leave Baton Rouge at 4:30am Sunday morning to embark on a chase for the Gray Gull. Joel, an entomology graduate student here at LSU, also came along.

LSU’s first home game was the Saturday before our Gray Gull outing, so in proper form I stayed out until 3am and stumbled into Garrett’s car promptly at 4:30 with just a little over an hour of sleep under my belt. I met Joel for the first time, endured a playful jeer or two from Jack, and laid my head down, not waking up until we were in Mississippi. The bird was seen as we were getting into Alabama, which was great news. As we talked state listing and submitted highway eBird incidentals, we did our best to keep tabs on the bird via eBird and Facebook. There hadn’t been any updates in a few hours when we got there around 10, so we headed to the beach access across from Stinky’s Fish Camp and started searching. We’d planned to send two of us east and two west down the beach, but ran into an older couple that was also searching. They headed east while our group went west.

We all but ignored a smattering of tern species moving down the beach and walked past the occasional Sanderling or Black-bellied Plover. About half a mile west of the beach access, Jack spotted a distant flock of gulls loafing way down the beach. We started trudging towards the white and gray blobs behind the heat shimmer.

The gull flock was in one of the longest unpeopled sections of beach, about 2 miles from the closest roadside beach access.

On our way there, Garrett did a double take at a Sanderling, hollering “Hey! That one’s banded!” We stopped to read the band, all noting that we’d never seen a banded Sanderling before. It put on quite a show, as Sanderlings always do, and Garrett even photographed most of the numbers on the metal band. i’m looking forward to hearing where this guy was banded!

Bearing the X60 flag and a green color band, this Sanderling distracted us from our march. I’ll update when we figure out where it was banded.

We had just resumed walking towards the gull flock when they all flushed. The tension in the air was strong, but Jack cut it by calling out “Got it! Moving left, center of the flock…” and we all got on it as Jack continued his directions. It was distant, but the all gray bird with ratty wings stood out.

Our first view of the Gray Gull

I was relieved after dipping this bird twice not even a week before. Everyone was all smiles as the flock swirled and returned to the beach multiple times. They seemed to favor that spot at the risk of whatever unseen threat they were swirling away from. We updated the Facebook posts with coordinates and texted the other birders we knew were looking for the bird that day. After we’d all looked through Jack’s Swarovski scope we kept going to get a closer look at our lifer Gray Gull.

From there, it was easy and uneventful. We walked right up to the flock and enjoyed point blank views of the gull loafing with Laughing Gulls. Occasionally, it would preen or probe the mud for sand crabs, recalling a plover. It would nip at juvenile Laughing Gulls that got too close while maintaining its place on the near side of the flock.

You can just see the diagnostic pale tertials sticking out, a point that helped seal the ID vs an aberrant Laughing Gull.

This is the first United States record of Gray Gull, found by Adam Pickos on September 3rd. A record from Louisiana in 1987 very likely pertains to this species (see photos from Shawneen Finnegan here: Louisiana “gray” gull) but that record was rejected because a melanistic Laughing Gull couldn’t be ruled out with the submitted documentation. Frustratingly, spread-wing photos were taken but never made it to the records committee. I hope they resurface in the wake of this Florida record. There’s also birds turning up in the Yucatan and further north along the Pacific coast of South America. Northward pushes of Gray Gull, and other Humboldt Current species, in association with El Niño are not a new phenomenon, and that certainly seems to be the case this year.

The Gray Gull is common from the southern coast of Ecuador to the southern coast of Chile, with a handful of records scattered northward to the Yucatan Peninsula. They nest in the Atacama Desert in the rain shadow of the Andes. This habit lead to the recent discovery of the nesting grounds of Ringed Storm Petrel and other seagoing Humboldt Current species. When not nesting, they aren’t dissimilar to Laughing Gull in habits, loafing on beaches and following nearshore boats. They do, however, spend more time probing the sand than their congeners, which might explain the proportionately thinner bill.

I also took the time to study some other common beach birds. The Laughing Gulls were neat to compare side by side with their southern relative, mostly slightly larger with more prominent gonydeal angles and slightly shorter, thicker bills.

It was also a good opportunity to take a closer look at the Royal Terns among the gull flock.

Happy with our looks at the Gray Gull, we headed back towards Garrett’s car, parked over two miles away across from Stinky’s Fish Camp. We dropped our optics and sat down to a lunch of assorted fried seafood at Stinky’s, along with several pitchers of water. The live music and food was a great cap to a successful chase. Before too long, we got out of there and headed for St. Marks, where Garret was hoping to get his first flamingos.

Three hours later, we were at Stoney Bayou Pool #2, the site of the famous and long staying flamingo, endearingly dubbed “Pinky”. Pinky was there, a distant pink dot on the far side of the pool. We hiked out for better, but still distant, looks of Pinky through the heat shimmer. Since I’d been here only a week before, I turned my attention to some shorebirds and was surprised to see Red Knots feeding in the grass along the pool’s edge. They were in gray basic plumage, but still a nice treat. We drove down to the end of the road, and when we reached the lighthouse, we got out for a little meander. Jack spotted another flamingo, this one presumably a lingering storm waif from Hurricane Idalia. This one was much closer and more satisfying, and cemented a great lifer for Garrett and Joel.

In the midday Florida heat, we enjoyed the flamingo with a local birder before getting on the road and heading west. We were nearly 8 hours from Baton Rouge, but had one more thing on the day’s agenda: road cruising in search of snakes.

The sandy pine savannas around the Florida panhandle are home to many charismatic and sought after snake species. We were hoping for an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake or a Southern Hognose Snake, but would’ve been happy with just about anything. In the first half mile, Jack called out a snake in the shoulder of the road. It was a large, gorgeous Eastern Garter. Though a common snake, we all passed it around and took pics in the evening glow.

In the next half mile, we stopped short for another snake in the road. Jack excitedly called “Pyg!” as we all jumped out for a closer look. A round of high-fives ensued. It was my first one, despite some futile attempts to cruise one in Louisiana. Since we didn’t have a snake hook, we just watched as the Dusky Pygmy Rattlesnake sat still in the grassy margin of the road. Eventually, after we’d all gotten some phone pics, the snake raced off into the pine savanna.

As we pulled out, a Red-cockaded Woodpecker chortled and Brown-headed Nuthatches called. We all commented on how much we love longleaf pines as we took in the trademark species. It wasn’t long before we stopped for yet another Dusky Pygmy Rattlesnake. We all got out and took more pics before it too retreated into the forest. We stopped again for a sparrow on the side of the road. Surprisingly, it was a Bachman’s! To boot, it was a lifer for Joel, and one we really weren’t expecting. We ended up seeing several more of these sparrows which are usually very difficult outside of breeding season, including one giving a broken song into the fading evening light.

We cruised for about an hour more without any luck besides another pygmy rattlesnake, this one already fallen victim to one of the few other vehicles on the road. We moved the dead snake from the road and headed back towards Baton Rouge. We got there near 3 am, exhausted, but fulfilled by a successful day.