You Give The Scene A Bad Name

Well hey there duders!  Its early October and you all no doubt in a state of hysteria, wondering what the next vagrant to roll through your town might be.  It sounds like its a been a decent fall here in California.  Two (2) Purple Gallinules on the LA River?  A Cerulean Warbler in Humboldt?  Damn!  People toss babies into dumpsters for birds of that caliber.....without a second thought, I might add.  Maybe that Blythe's Reed-Warbler on St. Lawrence might make its way down this coast.  If someone were to track that bird down....well, lets just say there would be a lot of babies in dumpsters.

Ive managed to see a couple Purple Gallinules in Florida last year, which was rad, but I have never rested my eyes upon that warbler of all warblers, the Cerulean.  Along with Connecticut Warbler (which showed up on the Farallones last month), it has been my experience that Westerners have a particularly heinous time finding these species, even if they have spent some time Back East.  Personally, Ive never even seen a bird that could by any stretch of the imagination have been turned into a Connecticut Warbler, which is highly regarded as the skulkiest member of their heavy-lurking tribe, the Oporornis.  As for Ceruleans, I have walked tall amongst them....but never managed to see one.  I heard one years ago in Massachusetts, but was never able to track it down, for they are treetop dwellers.

Which, for our purposes, has nothing to do with anything. Unlike those frustrating and furtive warblers, it is often not difficult to get good looks at gulls....the hard part is identifying them.  This obliging immature Black-headed Gull spent a few days on our beach on Buldir back in June, normally hanging out on a big pile of kelp that had washed up.  We also had an adult in breeding plumage show up a couple weeks afterward.

Because this is my blog, I'm not going to bother explaining why this is a Black-headed Gull and what age it is, because that is one of the most boring things I can conceive of doing right now.  I'll leave that to you, loyal readers.