Monday, January 19, 2015

Thompson's Bait Camp

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After the visit to Baytown Nature Center described in my previous post, I popped in at Thompson's Bait Camp to check out the birds there.

Unlike on my previous visit, this time there were no Red-breasted Mergansers, Buffleheads, Common Goldeneyes or Horned Grebes.

There were Laughing Gulls a-plenty: Hundreds were floating on the bay or standing on jetty posts or bathing in the shallows.


There were also quite a few Ring-billed Gulls.


I'm not good with IDing gulls and I spent a few minutes trying to turn various young birds into Lesser-black-backed Gulls. Unfortunately, they all turned out to be young Ring-billed Gulls.




The jetty posts also had a few Neotropic Cormorants, busy preening.


As always at this site, there were several Brown Pelicans too.




My final sighting was of an American White Pelican that floated majestically past the bait camp.


I suppose I'll visit the bait camp again before too long in hopes of finding one of the more exotic gulls that other birds keep reporting there. Or maybe I'll just accept that I really am hopeless at identifying gull species!
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