Came across the same place that Jim Mattson wrote about while looking for a better place to photograph this bird. The resident of the place, Linda Fries, told us that she told Dave and Marge Cahlander yesterday to tell everybody to come to her place for the best views of the bird, assuming it continues to stay on the island. It is really a good place to look at the bird without disturbing it.
Turn west off County Road 2 on 702nd Street, at the T turn right on 476th Street. Fire number 70423 is a little ways down the road. Use common sense in the time of day you stop there. Probably it would be best to look from the public access on the north side to see if the bird is on the island in the first place. While taking photos of the bird the Black-headed Gull showed up. As we had never seen this bird in breeding plumage over the past 7 years of observations we were surprised to see that the species has a moderately brown head in breeding plumage, not the black or very dark brown head pictured in the field guides. With a back shade about the same as a Ring-billed Gull and a red bill that blends nicely into the brown head it is really a very striking breeding plumaged bird. Was able to get many photographs of the gull also. We presume that the gull was on this lake today because the winds were very strong on the Spirit Lake today and the bird just wanted to stay out of the wind for awhile. Presumably it will be back on Spirit Lake in the future but it will make sense to check this lake occasionally. There were a lot of other gulls on Little Spirit today and we understand that generally there are not this many gulls on this small lake. Dennis and Barbara Martin [email protected]
