"Rare" Gulls

Just before I needed to head back to the Duluth Airport last Monday, we visited Canal Park at the entrance to Duluth Harbor to scan the Gull flock for rarities.  I was hoping for an opportunity to get my lifer Iceland Gull (missed) and/or to photograph a Thayer's or an Adult Glaucous Gull.   Unfortunately the gulls were too far off to photograph.  Although, I did relearn an important lesson.  One of the first gulls I noticed was a juvenile Great Black-backed Gull. To me no big deal, Great Black-backed Gulls are common all year round here at the Jersey Shore, so I continued scanning the flock to locate the juvenile Glaucous Gull my guide had just spotted.  However for my guide, it was the Great Black-back Gull that was the rare visitor to Duluth, to him the Glaucous Gulls were relatively common.  I had traveled out to Duluth and then braved their sub-zero temperatures to see birds that were very rare back home, but had forgotten that what I considered to be a common bird back home just might be the real rarity in Duluth.

Juvenile Great Black-backed Gull

Juvenile Glaucous Gull