Bountiful gulls

[Joel Beyer <twobirders at juno dot com>]

Finally having a day off work that coincided with the operating hours of
the Bountiful Landfill, I went looking for the Iceland Gull today,
January 4.  After a half hour of searching through the gulls on the
frozen pond  I succeeded in finding it.  Going by my notes and memory, I
would say that this bird is very similar to the gull Kathy and I saw at
BRNWR in '98.  That's a good thing because, unfortunately, that '98 bird
was definitely seen, to my knowledge, by only two other birders (who
first reported it), and all subsequent sightings, photographs,
documentations, etc. were of a very light colored Thayer's Gull which was
continually misidentified for over a week as the bird first reported (I
know this firsthand, as we saw this purported "Iceland" gull and it was
definitely not the same bird we reported on). In any case, it was great
to see this Iceland Gull.  Hopefully it will hang around through Saturday
so Kathy can see it.
In addition to the Iceland Gull, there were more Herring Gulls than I've
ever seen in one place before.  Also a few Thayer's and the second winter
Glaucous.  No sign of the possible Lesser  Black-backed Gull.
Also, I observed what appeared to be a Glaucous-winged Gull.  It matched
all size and plumage characterisics of a second-year winter bird, but
only the last third (tip) of the bill was black, instead of completely
black.  After seeing it fly, I ruled out Glaucous, Thayer's and Herring
because the buffy body plumage extended to the tail and the primaries,
without varying in color.  The back was grayish.  Does anyone have any
thoughts about what this bird might be?

Good birding!

Joel Beyer
========================================================================
 Send submissions to . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  birdnet@utahbirds.org
 Send replies to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  birdnet@utahbirds.org
   or to the original poster indicated in the From: line of the post
 Send (un)subscribe requests to  . . . .  birdnet-request@utahbirds.org
   In message body: type "subscribe" (without quotes) to subscribe
   In message body: type "unsubscribe" (without quotes) to unsubscribe
 Send problem reports to . . . . . . . . .  owner-birdnet@utahbirds.org
 Visit the Utah Birds web site at  . . . . .   http://www.utahbirds.org

------------------------------