March 2007 Ottawa County Glaucous Gull

Today (Friday March 9) started off looking like winter but it sure felt like spring by midday. Near Oak Harbor there were big flocks of Lapland Longspurs flying around, Killdeers everywhere, mixed blackbird flocks everywhere, and my first Turkey Vultures of the season (although I understand that Lee Garling saw some from the hawkwatch at Magee Marsh yesterday). But with spring in the air, I perversely decided to look at winter birds, specifically the gulls at the Ottawa Co landfill, on Route 163 about five miles east of Oak Harbor. Numbers there have dropped from earlier in the season but early afternoon today there were still about 900 Ring-billed Gulls and about 130 Herring Gulls, and with them I saw one Lesser Black-backed Gull (third-winter type) and one beautiful adult Glaucous Gull. According to Birds of the Toledo Area by Matt Anderson et al., Glaucous Gulls sometimes hang around until May, so this wasn't a particularly late date -- just a little incongruous among the stirrings of spring.