CO birders, Scoping Pueblo Reservoir from the South Marina from 10ish to 2ish today I had four Pacific Loons out to the west, probably quite visible from the North Marina as well. At least one of them would come quite close to the S Marina tires occasionally throughout my visit. A White-winged Scoter was at the tires around 10, but flew east to the dam and is probably somewhere on a different part of the reservoir (or gone altogether). The first Red-breasted Merganser I've seen on Lake Pueblo this season was present as well. Among good numbers of 4000+ gulls by the tires and on the water were Ring-billed, Herring, California, Lesser Black-backed (5) Thayer's Iceland (2), the returned Great Black-backed Gull (seen by Brandon) and a single first year bird I am about 95 percent certain is a Western or Olympic (Western x Glaucous-winged) Gull. I was drawn to it initially because of its overall dark, chocolate color with a darker head and stouter bill than most Herrings. Wings are very Thayer's like with somewhat frosty tips, also somewhat short primaries for a larus. Bird was Herring-sized but with a stouter bill of a different pattern, mostly black but with pink/yellow at the base of the lower mandible. I decided to leave it at unknown for now but I hope someone can come get better confirmation photos of the bird.
Good birding, David Tonnessen Colorado Springs -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/0b730e4e-8b1f-437b-9af2-fb0a1da562f1%40googlegroups.com.
