Posted by Bill Pranty on April 01, 2004 at 22:33:25:
Good evening,
There's a first-winter Glaucous Gull along the NW side of Lake Okeechobee, found a week or so ago by a student visiting Archbold Biological Station. Today, five of us Archboldians headed to the area to look for it. We arrived around 1730 and the Glaucous was nearly the only gull around -- it was standing along the shore east of the pier.
The location is described as Jaycee Park in A Birder's Guide to Florida (1996, page 173), but it's really the parking lot beyond the park (just over the dike). A rather famous inland flock of Black Skimmers usually roosts in the same parking lot.
Today's trip to see the Glaucous was a spur-of-the moment decision following a seminar, so I didn't have my camcorder with me. Nonetheless the original observer obtained a diagnostic photograph of the gull, which represents the first inland report and record in Florida.
The Glaucous didn't seem healthy today, and appeared to be in some amount of distress. Should anybody find it dead over the next few days, PLEASE pick it up (ignore the smell!) and deliver it to Archbold Biological Station (about 30 miles west, just south of SR-70 on Old SR-8), which maintains a fine reference collection of Florida birds.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Bill Pranty
Avon Park, Florida