[obol] RBA: Red-Legged Kittiwake: Mouth of Columbia R.

[David Bailey]

7 March 2007
10:40

Mike Patterson just called on his cell phone from the N. Jetty of the 
Columbia River. The mouth is swarming with BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKES. He 
spotted one bird over on the Oregon side of the channel that he 
discerned as having a darker gray to the upperwings and mantle and then 
he saw that the underwings were dark. It was definitely a kittiwake, and 
those field marks describe a RED-LEGGED KITTIWAKE; and hence the call to 
me.

Looks like the recent gyres or currents or ??? are causing several of 
the more northerly and pelagically staging species to stray south and 
west to within our viewsheds of the planet this late winter.

I am going out to find a Wiskered Auklet with Eva, but we will head 
south from Seaside....

David

David C. Bailey
Seaside, Oregon
baileydc at pdx.edu