[birding] Glaucous Gull

[Joel Geier]

Hi folks,

Great find by Rich & Glen! 

For those who go looking, it seems like the gull flock tends to wander
over to their "resting field" at the west end of Coffin Butte Rd.,
towards late morning so they're usually hanging out there at lunch time.

I was thinking that this was the fourth Glaucous Gull record for Coffin
Butte Regional Landfill. Hendrik's draft /Birds of Benton County/ lists
records from March 1993 (found by Barb & Jerry Bellin) and December 1993
(found by Bill Tice), but I can't find the third one among my reports on
birdnotes.net. I also can't find a record of one that I saw in Portland
around the same time, which means this must have been from 1997-1998 or
early 1999, before I started using birdnotes on a regular basis.
Possibly that Coffin Butte bird (also a 1st-winter bird) was the same
Feb 1997 bird that Hendrik lists for a field that sounds suspiciously
close to our old house  (probably the one that gull flocks at the
landfill used as a resting field before it was converted to mint farming
a few years ago).

Funny that no other locations in Benton Co. have produced records!

Happy birding,
Joel


On Wed, 2009-03-11 at 13:52 -0700, rich armstrong wrote:
> 1. glen lindeman, 2 from salem audubon, carolyn bales , and i did
> indeed find a 1st winter GLAUCOUS GULL at the corvallis landfill. this
> is about 10 miles north of corvallis on 99 and left on coffin butte
> road.
> 2. there were probably 50 gulls there - mostly california & glaucous-
> winged as far as i could tell. there was 1 adult WESTERN GULL.
> 3. this next week or 2 will be excellent weeks to look for gulls at
> the dump because they are dumping right next to the road. (i asked
> k=in hq and they told me probably another 1-2 weeks of dumping there)
> so you can drive up coffin butte road and park at the hq or whatever
> the building is on the left. you can view the garbage very well from
> that point. the gulls were coming right to it at 1 point but spent
> most of the 2 hours just soaring around. 
> 4. they also will roost in the puddles in the field - drive past the
> hq and go right down the dead end road - the field on the left has
> some nice puddles and nanette arrived while all the gulls including
> the glaucous were sitting in the puddles resting.unfortunately they
> were too far away for me to try to id all of them.
> 5. when we left there were 3 glaucous-winged gulls on the pond next to
> toketie marsh, certainly another place to check.
> 6. while you are there you can bird toketie marsh where we had 4
> CINAMON TEAL, 1 GREATER SCAUP among the ring-necks, and probably close
> to 50 SNIPE.
> Rich Armstrong
> 541-753-1978
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: Paula Vanderheul 
> To: midvalleybirding 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 11:51 AM
> Subject: [birding] Glaucous Gull 
> 
> 
> Hello Everyone,
>  
> Rich Armstrong just phoned to let us know that his birding group has a
> first year GLAUCOUS GULL at the Coffin Butte landfill.
>  
> They are viewing it from the headquarters parking lot on Coffin Butte
> Road.  
>  
> Rich is leading a field trip this morning with the Salem Audubon
> Society at EE Wilson and Coffin Butte.
>  
>  
>  
> Paula Vanderheul
> vanderp at peak.org
> 
> 
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