November started off on the right foot with a very rare for the area Black headed Gull this morning at Winsor Dam. After heavy rain overnight and very windy conditions today dawned mainly clear with a strong westerly wind. I certainly had high hopes that something good would show up at Winsor Dam so that is where I went before sunrise. I arrived just after Ted and we immediately started scanning the water and the air. We could see hundreds of gulls milling about way, way out with many seeming to want to head out to the southwest before mainly being blown back. It was tough to make out much for species as they were so distant. Eventually groups started coming in closer and most were Ring billed Gulls. As we were sorting through one group of perhaps 35 gulls Ted said he had an interesting bird in the flock. I was able to get on it with the scope as the birds milled around and fought the wind. The interesting bird had a dark carpel bar on the upper side, dark tail tip and dark trailing edge which seemed right for Bonaparte's Gull but the underside of the wings showed a dark triangle and the bird was only slightly smaller than the Ring billed Gulls and seemed to be able to fight the wind as well as the Ring billed Gulls (unlike the Bonaparte's Gull we saw perhaps 15 minutes after seeing this bird). With the field marks there was nothing else would could come up with besides a Black headed Gull...a truly rare sighting in the area. The gulls within this group all disappeared off to the southwest and were not seen again. As mentioned above another group of gulls arriving from the north a bit later contained a Bonaparte's Gull and the two individuals were quite different in size, plumage and behavior when compared. This is only my third Black headed Gull I have ever had in the county with the other two records both being in spring with one in March 2013 and another in April 2015 and both in the farm fields on the Hadley/Amherst border. Beyond the gulls we had a decent diversity of waterfowl with a total of eleven species as well as some raptors migrating.
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