A few weeks ago Al Schirmacher posed the question "What is our most surprising bird of the year?" on this list, and a number of people responded. Belatedly, here's mine. Belatedly, because although I actually saw the bird a year ago, I didn't have the surprise until yesterday.
Last night I was looking through some photos that I took at Salt Lake during Doug Buri's Shorebird Workshop last August, and I came across a set of Black Terns in flight. I had been trying to capture some good flight photos as the birds hawked over the water. Most looked like birds in basic plumage or juvenile Black Terns, and that was how I had recorded them on my eBird list. But when I looked more closely at the photos, I realized one was different. It was a juvenile White-winged Tern! A lifer, but not discovered until a year after I had seen it. Here's a link to two photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/47388339@N06/9429241463/in/set-72157634919739372/ I assume they are of a single bird. The photos were taken on the west side of Salt Lake (unfortunately, So. Dakota!) on Aug. 3, 2012. (Thanks to Oscar Johnson of BirdsEye Birding for confirming the ID.) Gerry Hoekstra Northfield ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
