A lifer and a photo upgrade of an upgrade

 Today I went birding from sunrise to sunset. It was by far the most I have been outside since the new year started. A Northern Shoveler has been hanging around a small pond in Warwick for a week. I was not driving there just to see it and turn around with gas prices the way they are. However, today was a nice day and I went there before driving down to South County. I pulled up to the pond and before I shifted into park, I had the bird. The Shoveler was with a hundred Mallards right next to the shoreline. I got out of my car and sat down. I took photos for half an hour. The bird kept moving so I could choose to shoot it in light or shade, close or further away. At times it was five feet from me.

    Last year, there was a similar situation in Wakefield. There was a fairly tame Shoveler in the river behind the Contemporary Theater. It got close for a duck, maybe twenty five feet. Certainly close enough that with my big lens I could fill the frame with my feathered friend. I got what I thought were very good photos. But today, that bird could not have been a better photo subject if it were in a zoo.

  A little later on, I met my friend Tim at Great Swamp to find early migrants. We saw some Green Winged Teal, Wood Ducks, and a Northern Pintail. The woods were quiet, but the variety of ducks was nice. When we just got to the impoundment, a report came in of a Common Gull. The Common Gull was found by Sam Miller and Alan Kneidel. Common Gulls are common in Europe, but definitely not America. Since Tim and I just got to the pond, we didn't do an about face. Instead we walked half way around looking at the ducks. We ended up birding for 45-50 minutes then walked back to the car. It was a twenty five minute ride to the Narragansett Seawall.

Common Gull

   Luckily for us the gull was still there. It blended in with the other gulls well. The key features were its black eye and lack of black on the beak (Ring Billed Gulls have a black line down the bill). It was smaller than a Herring Gull and just a bit larger than the Ring Billed Gulls. Luckily, there were a ton of birders still there and we got on it pretty quickly. 

  Though the bird was at the Seawall for a couple of hours, we only had it for fifteen minutes then it flew off. It came back for a quick flyby before disappearing out of sight as it went south. We got pretty lucky the gull was still there when we got there. It was a lifer for almost everyone that saw it except for a couple of lifelong birders. I did not know when I was at the swamp that it was only the second recorded Common Gull in Rhode Island. The other was in 2005. Lesson learned about not leaving immediately. Luckily, it wasn't learned the hard way.

I only got average proof photos of the Common Gull, but lots of photos of the Northern Shoveler. Many more below.