Gray Gull at Brownsville Landfill, 1/4/25

As I was on my way back from the Yellow-headed Caracara, I think it was while I was eating gorditas de barbacoa at the Taqueria Guadaljara in Refugio, the WhatsApp dinged.  Hokey smokes Bullwinkle!  Justin LeClaire had found an immature Gray Gull at the Brownsville Landfill while working on the Christmas Bird Count.  He got fantastic photos.  Not everyone is on board this ID as we have been fooled by melanistic Laughing Gulls in the past.  But North American gull guru and author of the latest gull field guide, Amar Ayyash thinks it is perfectly fine for an immature Gray Gull.  Here is a link to Justin's eBird list.  

I got my lifer Gray Gulls along with Gray-hooded and Kelp Gulls at the Ecuasal lagoons on the Salinas Peninsula of Ecuador back in the 90s.  They occcur mostly along the Pacific coast from northern Chile to Ecuador with scattered records north to southern Mexico.  One has been present along the Gulf coast of Florida and Alabama for well over a year and seen by hundreds.  This would be a first record for Texas if accepted by the TBRC.

It was a foggy morning so I was not too worried about being super early.  I got to the landfill about 9:30 only to find it was clear there and the dozen or so birders assembled on the mountain of garbage had already seen the Gray Gull.  It had been seen on the ponds below and had even flown up to where the trucks were dumping refuse.  Grizzled guller Martin Reid and young savant Ryan Rodriguez were discussing the ID minutia that would separate an immature Gray Gull from a melanistic winter Laughing Gull.  Brad McKinney had already seen it but wanted more views so we and with a few more headed down the track to the bottom of the mountain to get better views of the ponds below with thousands of loafing Laughing and Herring gulls.  With several scopes trained on the massive flocks it did not take long to find the bird.  My poor photos show a dark brown/gray gull with light worn wing coverts and a slightly contrasting hood, all consistent with the fine photos taken by Justin.  My camera was still stupidly set on aperature mode (as with the Yellow-headed Caracara) so I don't know how much that may have contributed to the poor image quality.

Good enough for a tick but that's about it.  Here's a few photos of the general ambience and gull madness.

The Gray Gull was seen again yesterday but the weather has turned cold with rain in the forescast so I will wait a few days before giving it another try for better photos.  You never know what you might find, so though not very pleasant, the Brownsville Landfill is always worth a visit.  Gray Gull is the eleventh gull species I've seen at the Landfill.  It was Texas bird #606 and Cameron County bird #438.

Yellow-headed Caracara at Galveston Sea Wall, 1/3/25

Way back last June an immature Yellow-headed Caracara was photographed in a coastal park in Seabrook southeast of Houston.  A few lucky birders got to see it but after the second day it disappeared not to be seen again.  That is untill Dec 17 when an immature Yellow-headed Caracara was photogrpahed by Clayton Leopold at the Seawall in Galveston.  It is assumed this is the same bird from June that had just wandered south along the bay.  I put off going up there to see if it would stick.  It's not like it was a lifer as I have seen many in Central and South America.  But it did stick and lots of birders were seeing it at the Galveston Fishing Peer so I thought I had better get up there before the approaching Polar Vortex hit.  The story is it would come to the fishing peer at first light, grab a fish, fly over to the miniature gold course, and then fly off and be hard to see for the rest of the day.  

So I made the long painful drive up there and was out on the Seawall at 7am with a few other birders all waiting for the magical apparition.  And it flew in right on schechule to the end of the peer in the weak predawn light, picked up a discarded hardhead (Hardheads are more properly know as Sea Catfish.  They are notorious bait thieves, not considered as good to eat, and are unhooked by fisherman and thrown on the ground to die) and landed on one of the lights.  Well it was too dark for any decent photos so I bumped the ISO up to 3200.  Still only blurry images.  6400 was still no good.  So I went up to ISO 12800.  I didn't know it would go that high.  And this is what I got at a couple of hundered yards.

The Yellow-headed Caracara then flew toward us, passed overhead and landed on one of the lights at the miniature golf course.  It posed a couple of minute and flew off.

But it dropped its breakfast and had to go to the ground to recover it.

I considered myself lucky to ge any recognizable images so I decided to take off and bird my way south.  Turns out I might have been able to get better images.  Two days before I had been photographing butterflies when a friend of mine found an unusual caterpillar.  In attempts to get better photos I switched from P mode to aperature mode and was shooting at F18.  I fogrot to switch back and was shooting the Yellow-headed Caracara at F 18 the whole time and possible not getting the best from my high ISO.  I'm not a real photographer and am not sure how that affected the results.  But I still consider myself fortunate to have waited so long on this bird and still get Texas lifer #605.  

Another Yellow-headed Caracara has been present for some time in Dade County, Florida and has been accepted by the Forida records committee.  My guess is the Texas BRC will follow suit but I don't want to get into that.