Friday we made the drive from Seward to Homer which is a place I have visited the past two winters to photograph Bald Eagles on the Homer Spit. The trip down began with rain but at about the midpoint the skies began to clear. Following a quick look around town – it is quite a different place sans snow and hoards of eagles (there are still a few around) – it was near dinner time and after that I took a drive to see what I could make of the sunset. From that venture comes this image of Mt. Iliamna, a volcano on the western side of the Cook Inlet.

Saturday was a complete washout but today dawned with partly cloudy skies and a trip to the Spit to see what I could come up with down on the shoreline. More on that in a minute because we need to deal with another volcano first. Augustine was pretty busy spewing ash and steam just prior to March’s visit though quiet when I was here. This morning as I was wrapping up my time shooting I looked up and noticed some very white clouds near the horizon and realized they were coming from the top of the mountain. At 75 miles from Homer there was a lot of moisture/haze between the volcano and me but here’s a shot of it, anyway. I though it kind of cool to be seeing an actual “eruption”, however minor it might be.

Back to the birds: The most common gulls around here are Glaucous-winged Gulls; I have seen a couple of Glaucous Gulls as well as a few Herring Gulls. This one is one of the toughies and, after reviewing the image for quite some time, I have decided that it must be a hybrid. Both the Glaucous-winged (GWGU) and Glaucous Gulls (GLGU) are known to hybridize with Herring Gulls and this bird appears to me to have the dark iris and correct shade of gray on the upper feathers that would be characteristic of GWGU but has darker gray – but not quite black – primary feathers that seems to me to say “Glaucous-winged x Herring Gull” hybrid (GWGU primaries would be about the same shade of gray as the upper feathers). What do you think?

The second most common gull here are the Mew Gulls and with this image I captured one in flight along the beach. Generally easy to pick out in the crowd when they are hanging out with the other larger white-headed gulls. Or so I thought until I realized there was another gull I had not seen before hanging around in the large roosts. This new bird for me will be the subject of next Friday’s quiz so I guess I can’t show you and image or tell you the name just yet. Just goes to show that flocks of gulls require careful inspection because you just never know what you may find.

Tomorrow afternoon I will be flying out of Homer for a 4-day trip to make images of Alaskan Brown Bears at Hallo Bay near Katmai National Park. There is no internet access (or cell phones) at this location so things will be quiet from this end until the end of the week. Look for Bird Quiz #10 late Friday or early Saturday.