{"id":31293,"date":"2021-10-26T08:47:39","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T15:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=31293"},"modified":"2021-10-26T08:47:39","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T15:47:39","slug":"california-gull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=31293","title":{"rendered":"California Gull"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ten days ago, I posted <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=31262\">Iceland Gull<\/a> and showed two pictures. The first shot was, indeed, an Iceland Gull (in its first winter). I misidentified the second picture: It was actually a California Gull.<\/p>\n<p>It is notoriously difficult to distinguish between some species of gulls, and so I identified that gull, in part, by its unusual behaviour: The gull would plunge into the water, emerge with a fish in the bill, and swallow it on the wing.<\/p>\n<p>It now emerges that the California also does this, and migrates through here at this time of year in large numbers. I greatly appreciate the help of Melissa Hafting, who noted that my fish-carrying gull was actually a California as revealed by subtle differences from the Iceland: The number of flight feathers tipped with black; The colour of the legs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, the previous blog&#8217;s opening remark remains correct: &#8220;Sometimes it takes a decade to solve a mystery.&#8221; It is just that the found solution should bear the word, <em>California<\/em>, rather than, <em>Iceland<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A California Gull dives to the water as it chases a fish.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-31295\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/californiagull211023s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This decade-old picture is now revealed to be a California Gull. <br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-31264\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/icelandgull111020as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Ten days ago, I posted Iceland Gull and showed two pictures. The first shot was, indeed, an Iceland Gull (in its first winter). I misidentified the second picture: It was actually a California Gull. It is notoriously difficult to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=31293\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31293"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31302,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31293\/revisions\/31302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}