gulls and pelicans
June 2nd, 2012 by Kristie Nelson
Date of sighting: this spring
Hi,
An update on a few things: the PRBO nest count crew recently finished our annual count of California Gulls at the Mono Lake colony. Over 3 days we tallied 20,056 nests. Despite the early spring and good numbers of shrimp in the lake, this total is still below the long-term average (about 23,000+). However, it is much better than last year (a dismal 16,700) and the year before. Hopefully with a good shrimp populaiton nesting success will be good, but we’ll have to wait until July to see how that turns out.
I’ve found a number of banded/tagged birds. First, AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS: back on May 12 birding crowley I saw 2 with wing tags, which I’d never noticed on pelicans before, possibly from not looking at them closely enough. Although both in a small group here at Crowley lake, one was from southcentral IDAHO, the other from northern OREGON on the coast by the OR/WA line. Pretty neat! Both were yearlings.
There have also been a couple gull bands: one at the June Lake Marina fish cleaning station was banded, but was so accustomed to people I could easily read the number with binoculars: it was banded as a chick on Mono lake in 2004.
We found a dead adult on Twain Island of Mono Lake while nest counting: It had a band, and was banded at Mono as a chick in 1994, so was 18 years old when it died.
This post was submitted by Kristie Nelson.
