More Wisconsin Gulls - June

The Wisconsin lakefront is quickly becoming my favorite summertime gulling locale. This past weekend, I was joined by both Ethan Gyllenhall and Alex Hale for what turned out to be an 8-species day. We covered Manitowoc, Sheboygan and Port Washington.

Highlights:
Manitowoc provided us with a 1st summer Little Gull with a half-hood. Amazingly, Charles Sontag observed 7 here the day after.

Little Gull (1st cycle). Manitowoc, WI. 08 June 2014.

Sheboygan was absolutely amazing! We enjoyed a fully-hooded 1st summer Little Gull (the bird I reported a couple of weeks prior from Manitowoc, click here for photos of that bird). Other goodies included a 9 Lesser Black-backeds (six 1st cycles, one 2nd cycle, two 3rd cycles). No adult LBBGs were found as is expected in the summer months.

Lesser Black-backed Gull (1st cycle). Sheboygan, WI. 08 June 2014.

Ethan quickly picked out this bleached Thayer's/Kumlien's type off the Municipal Beach that is just north of Deland Park. This stretch of beach holds hundreds of loafing gulls throughout the summer.

Likely a Thayer's Gull (1st cycle). 08 June 2014. Sheboygan, WI. 

Knowing whether this is a Thayer's or Kumlien's is anyones guess, but we did get to see the open wing and the bird showed a contrasting secondary bar, a relatively bold tail band and darker outer webs to the outer primaries:

We finished the day off at Port Washington where we picked up an adult Laughing Gull and a 3rd cycle Lesser Black-backed. We tried chumming this bird but to no avail. It's amazing to see what little interest the Ring-billeds and Herrings show in handouts here - much different than birds found in the inner-city.