Keep an open mind here. Today, after finding a male Harlequin Duck at Liberty Beach, Lake Mille Lacs, Jim Otto, Paul Budde and I continued south to a scenic overlook at Twin Bays north of the airport. Almost immediately I spotted a distant bird (~ 500-600 m?) flying with a wing beat that reminded me of a jaeger, ie. rather fast paced and steady. I put my scope on it and saw that it was, in fact an adult-type gull - a white tail, gray upperparts, white head and what appeared to be mostly dark underwings. The wings were quite pointed and the size seemed small for Ring-billed Gull, but none were nearby for comparison. It was angling slightly away from me, giving only brief peeks at the underwings, again seemingly darkish throughout. The bird was somewhat backlighted so I was not 100% certain of the degree of darkness of the underwings. At the time I did not feel that I was just seeing shadow. I don't think either Jim or Paul got on the bird until it was just too distant to make out anything. I simply commented that I sure would love a closer look at THAT bird. I did not speculate on its ID, only that the rapid, deliberate wing beat and apparent darkish underwing were intriguing. While heading back home I ran the bird through my mind and realized that I noticed no darkness on the wing tips of the gull, ie., no black wing tips, only gray. When I got home, I could not get the nagging notion out my head that the bird could possibly have been a winter-plumaged Ross's Gull. I don't wish to create a false sense of hope here (and please don't publish this in Minnesota Birding!), only to encourage the birding community to be open to the possibility that this species might be present in the state and to take a hard look and any suspicious suspects.
Finally, the Fork-tailed Flycatcher was not found by us this morning. Jim ---- Join or Leave mou-net:http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives:http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
