. . . birding, photography and living with pet birds . . .
Posted in gull on Jun 19th, 2010
Ring-Billed Gulls are easy to identify. Faithful to their name, they have a black ring around their beaks. Another distinguishing mark is their pale eyes.
California Gulls are more difficult to identify. The key is to look at the eye ring, the beak coloring and the legs. Below is a California Gull in winter plumage. The [...]
Posted in gull on Feb 21st, 2010
Utah Lake in Provo, UT is a great place for birding. The lake has a variety of birds and there are marshes where more birds will hopefully hang out in the summer.
There are two long roads that make nice walkways for looking at the ducks.
Some fishermen drilled through the ice to fish. The Ring-Billed Gulls [...]
Jon and I were offered new jobs in Salt Lake City and we jumped at the opportunity to move to a beautiful and affordable city.
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I am going to miss California. I will miss the ocean most of all.
Posted in gull on Oct 18th, 2009
It’s time for another gull post!
Gulls are so hard to identify. I mean, I don’t even know where to begin with the picture below. What’s with the grey feet? That’s not in my field guides.
I can, however, identify Western Gulls. The first step in narrowing down gulls is to look at [...]
Posted in gull on Aug 23rd, 2009
Birds, like people, frequently wear different clothing in different seasons. Below are three Heermann’s Gulls in their adult breeding plumage. The photo was taken July 3, 2009. Note the white heads.
I’ve spent much of the day trying to distinguish between different types of gulls (Shush! We all have our hobbies). CA Gulls have black [...]
Pescadero, CA is my new favorite place. They have a beach, marshes, and Butano State Park. Today was an exceptionally good day for birding. I saw several new types of birds and several well-known birds that are experiencing a molt in anticipation of their winter plumage.
The most exciting discovery of today was seeing Western Sandpipers [...]
Posted in gull on Jul 31st, 2009
The Mormons settled in Utah in 1848. Salt Lake City is home to the headquarters for the Church of Latter-day Saints, which is in Temple Square. SLC is on a grid system and the center of the grid is Temple Square. Here’s a picture of the Assembly Hall, the congregation area for the church.
During the [...]
I love capturing birds in motion. The most common, scrappy bird becomes a piece of art. Below is a pigeon flying after pieces of bread. This may be my favorite bird picture because his head and the pieces of bread are in focus, while the wings become out-of-focus at the edges.
This is [...]
Posted in gull on Jul 5th, 2009
It’s summer, which means that the coastal birds are busy breeding. Heermann’s gulls are different from most gulls in that they migrate south to breed and fly back north for the remaining summer months. Here is the Heermann’s Gull in his breeding plumage.On Friday we went to Monterey Bay to visit the aquarium. Driving back [...]
Posted in gull on Jun 28th, 2009
California has a variety of different gulls. Identifying them is further complicated by the different feather patterns exhibited by the young seagulls.
California gulls are everywhere. They’re at the beach, in the parking lots, they’ve very adaptable to human environments.
This is an adult California gull. Note the white spots on the tips [...]
