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All: I was "poaching" in Richard Stern's patch along the Canning Rd over the noon hour, and missed the Glaucous Gulls found by him. I was really looking for Horned Larks - no one else has turned up subspecies other than alpestris yet - but I didn't see any small birds along the road edges. Melting has exposed lots of good terrain for them in the fields. I was, indeed ,struck by the vast numbers of gulls in the area - far exceeding the flocks of at most scores that we see these days around Halifax Hbr. I guesstimated the largest flock some 100s of m west of Church St. to have about 1300 birds. This is probably the wrong time of year to expect vagrants among them, but I did see very briefly one gull, smaller than nearby Herrings and slightly darker mantled, and with what appeared to be a dark mark on its bill. I had just focussed on its legs, which appeared to be greyish at first glance, when the group took off and landed afar. Many years ago, in Oct. 1976, a Mew Gull was seen near Canning by several of us and photographed by me at great distance. We hardly knew then about the Common Gull as an almost certainly different species from the N. Am. Mew Gull, but the one distant photo shows of the a relatively tiny bill and very rounded head - a plausible match for a N. Am. Mew Gull. I think some very close scrutiny of the large Valley flocks could produce California and Mew Gull. Possibly not until next fall, though, as they may favour agricultural land over seacoasts at that season. Cheers, Ian Ian McLaren
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