American Oystercatcher Family

American Oystercatcher. Isn't this the coolest looking bird ever? I can't claim any credit for the awesome photos, though. All these pictures were taken by my son, Pete Wrublewski. We were very lucky to see a whole family of American Oystercatchers at South Beach in Chatham earlier this week.


Seen in real life, the vivid colors are even better than I expected.  The bright red-orange eye ring, for example, is not a bit subtle!  This adult oystercatcher had a numbered band on each thigh and a metal band on it's ankle.  I don't know what the yellow bands mean - I don't even know if this is the male or the female oystercatcher.


This is the other adult; the one without any bands.  If one adult wasn't labeled, I wouldn't have been able to tell them apart.  They appear to be identical.  Both have really large feet, BTW!


They are even stranger looking viewed face first!


The banded bird seemed to stay closer to the two youngsters throughout the day. 


Here she (or he) was yelling at Pete for getting too close to the babies.  The youngsters begin yelling in response to her cries of alarm.  (Note: You can see the metal band clearly in this photo.)


Here they are!  Two immature American Oystercatchers up close and personal! 


I don't know how old they are, but my copy of "Shorebirds of North America, Europe, and Asia: A Guide to Field Identification (Princeton Field Guides)," says the pale fringe of feathers on the head and neck mean they are "fresh" juveniles.


One of the juvenile American Oystercatchers resting, . . .


scratching an itch, and then . . .


flying away! This is an awesome shot, isn't it? (Congratulations, Pete!) It's the only oystercatcher in flight we saw all day! Evidently they spend a lot of time walking around.

Lesser Black-backed Gull!

You might think it is yet another Great Black-backed Gull . . .


unless you saw it standing next to Great Black-back Gulls.  This gull is clearly smaller than a GBBG; it is paler in color than a GBBG; and it has yellow legs instead of the GBBG's pink legs.


Or, you might assume it is just a Herring Gull . . .


but this gull is smaller, thinner, and darker than a Herring Gull.  What is it?  It is a Lesser Black-backed Gull!  Lesser Black-backed Gulls are "uncommon to rare visitors from Europe," according to my Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (2003).  They are "smaller and more slender than Herring," and "much darker gray above than Herring, and usually slightly paler than the Great Black-backed Gull; note yellow legs and mostly black wingtips" (Sibley p188).


Doesn't the Sibley description perfectly describe this bird? I've gone through all my field guides and all over the web trying to prove myself wrong about this, and I couldn't.


It is not a dark Herring Gull or a light GBBG - both of those species have pinkish legs.


It is not remotely similar to a Ring-billed Gull, either. Ring-billed gulls do have yellow legs, but they are much lighter colored and the bill is all wrong.


I read up on Lesser Black-backed gulls before our trip, which is why I was able to recognize the species in the first place. According to Massbird, there were two Lesser Black-backed gulls on South Beach last week, but I never expected to see one myself.   My son Pete quickly snapped these pictures - I didn't bother with pictures because I didn't believe it was real! It is a good thing Pete was snapping away, too. It's thanks to him we have pictures of the bird at all.  Better still, we have pictures of this gull together with local gulls, so we can compare sizes and colors!


What do you think? Am I right? Or am I missing something big? If so, let me know what you know!

The Perfect Day

My son and I returned to South Beach in Chatham on Monday, hoping to see some of the birds we missed last month.  Our second trip was picture perfect in every way!  The weather was as good as it gets; 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, and nice steady wind blowing the bugs away.  That's right - NO BUGS!  The tide was perfect timed for shore-birding, reaching dead low two hours into our trip.  The island was perfect because there was almost no one there but us. Best of all, the birds on South Beach were perfect: exactly what we hoped to see this trip, and much more.  My pictures weren't perfect, unfortunately.  The good news is that my son was taking pictures too, and his images are extraordinary!


I'll start posting my son's images tomorrow.  In the meantime, this post will serve as a preview of coming attractions.  The first amazing bird we saw was the one I most wanted to see; the American Oystercatcher.  You have to agree that these are the coolest-looking birds we have around here, right?  Well, we saw a whole family of Oystercatchers on Monday - they were with us most of the day!  My son took about 200 Oystercatchers pictures.  Wait till you see them!


I wanted to see a whole flock of terns very badly. Other people have seen them, and I loved seeing the photos. As you can see, I lucked out once again! A flock of terns in mid-air; how cool is that? (This flock of terns has a few surprises in store. I won't reveal what makes this photo special just yet, but if you look carefully, you may see it yourself!)