Monday, November 12, 2012 Gog-le-hi-tee

We had to make another run to the doctors in Tacoma again today. This time for Rudy. He had taken the morning off for the early appointment so we thought after seeing the doctor we'd take a quick detour over to gog-le-hi-tee wetlands in the Tacoma tide flats before he dropped me off home and he continued on to work. Why go-le-hi-tee? There's been a rare bird alert there. We get so few in Washington that we can't pass up trying to see one so close to us. We keep reading about a lone slaty-backed seagull being seen in the area, hanging around with other seagulls. We'd stopped by before but couldn't get a definite ID as we didn't have the scope. We came prepared today with scope and binocs. We started looking right off as he'd been seen on the top of some of the warehouses. There were seagulls there alright. The slaty-backed is supposed to be a bit darker, pink legs a yellow eye. Well there were plenty of pink-legs gulls but we never did see any with a yellow eye so for now no rare bird. But I did get a good ID on a thayer's gull (#173). Maybe not a rare bird but one more for the list.