[cobirds] Field Trip Announcement: Gullapalooza to be held February 2, 2013

Hello, Birders.

The annual gull-watching extravaganza known as Gullapalooza will be held in 2013 on Saturday, February 2nd. We will begin at noon at the usual meeting place: at the headquarters to Xcel Energy's Valmont Station, off 63rd Street in Boulder, Boulder County. More details to come, but I thought I'd get the advance word out.

Learn more about Gullapalooza here:

http://blog.aba.org/2011/01/227.html

Speaking of Xcel Energy's Valmont Station, I was out there yesterday afternoon, Thursday, Dec. 27th, with Ted Cooper, Norm Lewis, and Jeremy Winick. As Steve Mlodinow has noted, there are now two (2) American White Pelicans at Valmont--one of which seems to be a bit under the weather. The 15 Tundra Swans were accounted for, and they were doing their darnedest to keep up with the racket of the thousands of geese. Speaking of geese, there were even more of them yesterday than on Wednesday. I didn't do the Mlodinow thing and diligently analyze the DNA of all 5,500+ birds, but I did notice a single adult Snow Goose, and a large one at that.

We saw 7 Ruddy Ducks out there, not present or overlooked by my party the day before. Ruddy Duck is actually quite uncommon--"rare," I'd say--in Boulder County in winter.

Gulls. We saw one adult Glaucous Gull that seemed smallish to us, and I wonder if it's the same bird seen earlier in the day in Broomfield County by Bill Schmoker and Steve. It was an odd bird, with the heft of a "normal" (read: big) Glaucous Gull; thus, not necessarily the small subspecies barrovianus (which tends to be slim and dainty, approaching Iceland Gull in build). This one, though, had the typical build for a Glaucous Gull, but it was simply smallish overall. Whatever it was, it was *not* one of the 1 or 2 Glaucous Gulls seen the day before at Valmont. Keeping straight with the gulls can be hard. On that note, we saw the same number of Lesser Black-backed Gulls (2) as the day before, but an adult was new. However, the adult Mew Gull that we saw seemed to be the same as the day before. No "Thiceland" Gulls yesterday, but 4 more-or-less "normal" Thayer's. And 3 Californias, as opposed to 2 the day before. My head is spinning. Numbers of both Ring-billed and Herring gulls seemed a bit up from the day before--not much of a surprise, given the continued cold weather.

Ted Floyd

tedfloyd57@hotmail.com

Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado