Frankling in Ocean Isle (25Oct2015)

Ever been Frankling before?  Apparently the plan all along was to look for Franklin's Gulls when Sam C asked if I wanted to go down to Ocean Isle and Sunset Beach, NC.  So when he found one in his scope sitting across the Shalotte Inlet and let me take a look, it took a while for me to register what I was looking at.  After he asked me if one of the gulls looked different, I noticed the slightly smaller gull with neat partial hood and nice white eye arcs.  It was a Franklin's Gull! Franklin's are primarily a gull of the midwest

Dawn the Rosy Fingered.

Spoiler Alert! All the photos suck due to distance and early morning light.

This photo shows the smaller Franklin's on the left compared to Laughing Gull on the right.  Even the legs are shorter.  The partial hood was sharply delineated on the nape as opposed to the gradual hood that some of the immature Laughing Gulls were sporting.

This digiscoped image you can see the Franklin's behind the Black Skimmer.

The bill was daintier than the Laughing Gull bill and the forehead more sloped.  The prominent white eye arcs showed much nicer in the scope.  I think this was an adult bird.

A bit later I found what I thought was a first year Franklin's.

Possible Franklin's being chased by a Herring Gull.

Nice pronounced eye arcs, tail band does not extend to side of tail, white underwing with dark tips more confined than on the Laughing Gulls.

Then we re-found the adult and I tried using my camera on the tripod but these heavily cropped pics were not much better than my iPhone digiscoped pics.

Franklin's behind the Laughing and in amongst the Black Skimmers.

We made a valiant effort to look for Reddish Egrets but we did not want to anger the bird gods so we pretended to be happy with one new bird.

This Cuckoo was obviously a hybrid.  The top half of his bill was black and bottom half yellow.  Just kidding, its a Yellow-billed Cuckoo.

Seaside Sparrows are a slovenly species.

Common Yellowthroats are not slovenly.

Marsh Wren

Not a bad day!  Maybe next week I will try Shackleford Banks for Reddish Egret.

Cheers.