{"id":480,"date":"2015-01-28T16:53:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T16:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/?p=480"},"modified":"2015-01-28T17:42:42","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T17:42:42","slug":"distant-gulls-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/distant-gulls-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Distant Gulls in Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nOften during the winter, thousands of gulls spend the night on either Spruce Run or Round Valley Reservoirs. \u00a0While they are too far away for me to see from my house, each morning the gulls stream west to feeding sites in (presumably Easton) Pennsylvania or along the Delaware River.<\/p>\n

From my yard, this stream of gulls is usually very distant, and can be seen through the trees. \u00a0This video<\/a>\u00a0was shot with my iPhone6 through my Kowa 883 scope. \u00a0The hillside on the left is 3.1 miles away to the north. \u00a0The powerless on the right are 4.5 miles away. \u00a0The gulls are somewhere in between. \u00a0Some are closer (thankfully) but many are pretty far.<\/p>\n

This is how I see most of the gulls from my yard. \u00a0Thankfully, a few usually fly over my house each morning as well, though the great bulk of them are these distant dots. \u00a0Most have to be left unidentified as gull sp. though most are probably Ring-billed Gulls<\/strong> and usually you can pick out a few larger heavier Herring Gulls<\/strong>–especially the darker young birds. \u00a0Occasionally I can pick out Lesser Black-backed Gulls<\/strong>. \u00a0And twice so far this year I’ve been able to pick out a monster huge Great Black-backed Gull<\/strong>. \u00a0My chances of picking out an Iceland Gull at this distance? \u00a0Probably very small!<\/p>\n

Identifying flying gulls is a challenge, especially at a distance where it can be a challenge to separate even the abundant Ring-billed Gulls from the common Herring Gulls. \u00a0But such is the life of a backyard birder! \u00a0Each day I scope the gulls out, adding at least these two common gulls to my daily yard list, and hoping for something even more exciting–though always skeptical of what I think I’m able to see at such a great distance!<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>

Google Maps sight line from my yard to the distant hill in the video.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Often during the winter, thousands of gulls spend the night on either Spruce Run or Round Valley Reservoirs. \u00a0While they are too far away for me to see from my house, each morning the gulls stream west to feeding sites … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Blr3-7K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backyardbigyear.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}