Birders, Before anyone else goes out of their way looking for the Big Johnson tern, I want to provide a definitive update. I also want to thank Mark Peterson his...considerate post yesterday. In fact, he was being too kind. Mark called me yesterday while he was looking at the bird to tell me he was looking at a Common Tern, saying the legs were too long for Arctic and the bill bi-colored. I am still struggling to reconcile some of the field marks I saw, but I got another confirmation today from my uncle Bill. I have not been back to look at the tern again, but I will defer to these experienced birders. If they say it is a Common Tern, the bird is a Common Tern.
I can't say I'm not disappointed that I studied this bird so thoroughly and was still wrong on the ID, but I guess this is a challenging ID, and out-of-range birds like Arctic Tern always deserve careful scrutiny by multiple observers. Dan Maynard Manitou Springs, CO On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Mark Peterson <[email protected]>wrote: > COBirders, > > I was able to get back to Big Johnson today and I was unable to find an > Arctic Tern. I also looked for the Bald Eagle nest that I believe is > somewhere along Fountain Creek but had no success with that either. There > was a single FRANKLIN'S GULL and a possible young LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL > that I could not re-find after walking all the way over to the other side of > the reservoir for better looks. Nothing else of note. > > ----- > Mark Peterson > Colorado Springs > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Colorado Birds" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds?hl=en.
