While looking at gulls at Halibut Point Rec today, I noticed one with yellow legs. I had previously heard about a California Gull at Totem Park (a couple of weeks ago) and, despite looking for it on several occasions, had not been able to find it. As this was a large gull with yellow legs, I thought there was a pretty good chance that it was a California Gull, but I wanted to get some photos of it. It was fairly far away, across the river from me and I didn’t have any boots.
At first I tried wading in barefoot with my pants rolled up just to get a little closer, I discovered the water got deeper faster than I thought, and before long my feet were quite cold, making it difficult to walk. I came back to shore and decided to sacrifice dry shoes and just wade in with them. I was able to get quite a bit closer doing this and took some photos of it on the beach.
When I got home this evening and looked at my pictures, I realized that I had actually photographed a California Gull in flight a little earlier, though I had not realized it at the time. When I took these pictures, I think I just noticed the gull looked a little different, but by the time I got home, I forgot that I had taken them at all.
California Gulls are listed as Rare in Summer and Fall on the Birds of Sitka National Historical Park checkilst. This is the first time I have noticed one (not that I’ve been paying all that much attention for very long).
