Weekend Birds

I had quite a bit of accidental birding this weekend. First, walking to class Friday afternoon, I saw Doc called over to identify a bird outside the senior building. It was a female Ring-necked Pheasant. This fat bird had a small head, a long tail, and a mottled brown coloring with small black spots on its back. Out apple picking on saturday down by Mecox Bay, the air was full of gulls. I recognized Great Black-backed Gulls with their white underbellies, black back and wings, yellow beak, and pink legs, Ring-billed Gulls with white underbellies, gray wings, black wingtips, and black ring around the end of their bill, and some other gulls that might have been Herring Gulls. On the bus ride home, I spotted a Red-tailed Hawk flying circles over the potato fields. It had long, broad, rounded wings, a light underbelly, and I wide tail with rusty red coloring that caught my eye as it turned. I looked pretty darn crazy craning my head out the window, but it's always worth it for the birds.