California dreaming

I noticed some birders with enormous lensed cameras (overcompensating, no doubt) whilst driving lakeside, and I stopped to ask them what they were looking at. Unlike all my prior birder interactions, these gents were gruff. Their first answer to my "Wadda ya lookin at?" was "Rare birds". I managed to stifle my "Duh!", and replied "What is the name of the rare bird?" with my shy but engaging smile. They looked at me askance for a moment (possibly visualizing an enormous lens divot in my head) and replied "California Gulls". Then they hurriedly packed up and scurried to their car. I gazed across a half mile of lake at the little white dots floating on the dark gray water and wondered what a California Gull might actually look like, and not having any advanced optics I resolved to look them up on the internet sometime.

This morning I made my rounds of the two blogs I read religiously, and unbelievably one of them had several pictures of California Gulls taken yesterday in Idaho. Apparently they are quite common there.

Synchronicity - you just can't beat it!