Hi everyone! Jacob and I are really thrilled to have discovered this gull last weekend on a trip to Coney Island. We have only been seriously birding for a year or so now, and we weren't planning on making any bird counts that day, but we hadn't actually ever recorded any Laughing Gulls on our eBird accounts since we have done most of our birding out on the east end of Long Island. We were watching the laughers when we spotted the Grey-hooded Gull amongst them. We didn't realize just what he was, but we knew it wasn't a Laughing Gull! But since Gray-hooded Gulls don't appear in our guides, we couldn't really identify the bird, so we have to thank Doug for that.
Fortunately we were able to make a trip back this weekend to see the gull again and get better pictures. It was really cool to see so many birders out to see him! He flew by only a couple of feet away from Jacob's face at one point. I know tons of photos of this gull have been posted at this point, but here are mine from yesterday just for kicks (you've all already seen my iPhone photos from the day of the discovery when Doug posted my photostream earlier): http://flic.kr/s/aHsjvGy7Wq Sara Burch Port Jefferson Station, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
