Kelp Gull and a Western Flycatcher in Ohio

  • By Bruce Glick
  • December 15, 2015
  • 414
                        
Kelp Gull and a Western Flycatcher in Ohio To say that it has been a monumental week for birding in Ohio would be putting it mildly. It started out when Ben Morrison found a very dark mantled gull on Saturday, December 5, at Springfield Lake in Summit County on Saturday. Kent Miller came up and photographed the bird just before dark. Before long there was growing consensus that the bird was a Kelp Gull, a gull normally found in South America, although also known from Louisiana. The next morning more birders saw the gull before it left for the day with the large flock of gulls that had spent the night at the lake. The assumption is that these gulls spend the days at area landfills. Over the next 10 days the Kelp Gull has been very hard to find. It showed up several times at Springfield Lake just as it was getting dark and in the morning just at first light. Some birders were fortunate, many were not. I drove to Ohio and spent two evenings and one morning with crowds of birders but did not see it. We did see a Thayer’s, Glaucous, and several Lesser Black-backed Gulls. A few years ago that would have been really amazing at an inland lake, but times are changing. Thanks to Kent and Cindy Miller for hosting me at their place in Hartville, and to Larry Rosche for buying breakfast after our morning gull watch. There have been a number of articles written about the Kelp Gull, including one in the Akron Beacon Journal. While I was at Springfield Lake, a group of birders from western New York arrived to join Ohio birders from as far away as Cincinnati. As is always the case, such times are great for visiting with birders that you may not have seen for a long time, and meeting new friends. There is a good chance that the Kelp Gull will continue to be seen from time to time but the chances on any given day don’t seem very good. On December 13, I received texts from Kent Miller and Su Snyder, alerting me to the discovery of a western flycatcher in southeastern Ohio. There were excellent photos posted of the bird, which may be difficult to identify to species since the former Western Flycatcher was split and the two current species are nearly identical. Recordings of the calls may help make identification possible. I decided right away that this one is just too far from Goshen, Indiana, so best wishes to all those who have headed that way to see it. Now to last week’s photo quiz. It wasn’t hard to see that the bird was a thrasher, but which one? If you are birding in southern Arizona or New Mexico, by far the most common thrasher is the Curve-billed. You see them everywhere, including at feeders, as was the case for this Curve-billed Thrasher which was at feeders in Glenwood, New Mexico. Finding the other thrashers in the southwest is not always easy. It usually takes some searching in the right places to find Le Conte’s, Crissal, Bendire’s, or Sage Thrashers, while California Thrashers are in California, and Long-billed Thrashers are only in southern Texas. Our eastern Brown Thrasher occupies not only the eastern states but throughout the mid-west and up to the Dakotas and Montana. Learning to separate the thrashers by their songs can be quite challenging. Still, it’s a very interesting family of birds and the lovely song of the Brown Thrasher is one of the signs of spring in Ohio and Indiana. I’m not including photo quiz birds over the holidays but will get back to them again in January. Happy holidays and Good birding! Bruce Glick birderbruce@yahoo.com 330-317-7798


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