This morning I did some birding around lake eerie.  We started at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge.  Highlights included a single SNOW GOOSE, 2 maybe 3 CACKLING GEESE, many many TUNDRA SWANS, and a single dark phase ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK.

  We then moved on to Rocky River and checked the park and Bradstreets Landing.  Highlights were great black-backed gull and surf and black scoters.

  Our last stop was Headlands Beach State Park where I did not see the previously reported purple sandpiper (although I only walked the breakwall). But after a while of picking through a gull flock that consisted of a couple Great Black-Backed Gulls and many Ring-billed and Herring Gulls I came across what I believe was a juvenile THAYER'S GULL!  Here is what led me to believe it was a Thayer's: I first noticed it was slightly smaller and quite a bit lighter than the Herring Gulls it was with.  The first thing that crossed my mind was an Iceland Gull (which was one of the species I had been keeping an eye out for), but it didn't quite match up.  The gull was lighter was it wasn't as white as an Iceland Gull should be and its primaries were darker than its back.  However I still wondered if it were an odd Iceland because it had a thinnish black bill, an Iceland-like body form, and an obvious light patch on the front of its face around the bill.  I decided to look it up and
 this seemed to fit the description of the juv. Thayers very well.  The only thing that didn't stand out was the more cleanly marked back pattern.  The pattern may have been a little cleaner than the Herring Gulls around but the pattern seemed lighter rather than cleaner.

  Ryan Steiner
  Smithville, OH


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