The Nemesis Bird

On Monday I headed to Cape May, NJ with a friend to look for a Dovekie that had been reported on Two Mile Beach. There was also a Barnacle Goose hanging around and both of these birds would have been lifers for me. Red Crossbills and an Ash-throated Flycatcher were being seen on Cape May Island which would both be my first in NJ so it seemed like a lot of potential in one day.

Unfortunately, not a single one of those really neat birds showed up for us. We did manage not see some other good birds including 5 sandpipers including Western and Purple, all three scoter species and several half-hardies such as Gray Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Hermit Thrush and Eastern Towhee.

On the way back to Pennsylvania we stopped at Tullytown, right across the Delaware River from a huge landfill in New Jersey that attracts thousands upon thousands of gulls. You can see what lifer I saw here last year in a previous post.

Many great gull species have been seen here including California, Thayer’s, Iceland, Glaucous, Black-headed, and most recently, a Slaty-backed Gull. We managed to locate a huge first-cycle Glaucous Gull immediately upon arriving and I managed only one photo that was unobstructed by other gulls.

A little later my friend found a gorgeous adult Iceland Gull that I attempted to digiscope but I had too much trouble finding it in my viewfinder to actually photograph. We later came across the first cycle bird below which was easier to photograph.

From all the photos I took, I managed some interesting ones where I did not get the bird I was going for. In the photo below, you can see the young Glaucous Gull in the background but the Herring Gull was insistent on being the primary subject and covered the Glaucous Gull up. So juvenile!