Birds and Other Nature Sightings

     On Sunday afternoon I took my wife for a ride to Island Beach State Park.  Except for an abundance of common loons and a half dozen razorbills, it was a blasé day for birding along the beach.  However, a little change up greeted us when we reached the beach end at the inlet jetty.  A couple hundred gulls, mostly herring, gathered there, many on the water and many on the jetty.  Almost immediately, I spotted an all-white gull, amongst the white-and-gray gulls, sitting on the water near the jetty.  I pointed it out to my wife and then identified it as a Glaucous gull .  I explained to her that it was one of the two white-winged gull species that can show up this time of year, the other being Iceland gull .  I pointed out the difference that these gulls lack the black wing tips that all the other gulls around us had.  It was 13 months since I last saw a Glaucous gull.  My wife was with me that day too when we saw one flying a...