uch as Snowy Owl and White Winged Crossbills. But the star of the season has to be the two Ivory Gulls that have shown up in Mass this month--in Gloucester and Plymouth.I ventured to Plymouth and found an impossibly white bird sitting at the end of a pier, with several photographers oogling nearby.
Before long, the bird, and hundreds of other gulls, flew to the parking lot where someone put out an uncooked turkey carcass. The ivory gull, despite being half the size of the others, bravely and ravenously, speared meat morsels. The number of photographers grew but the gulls were oblivious. The hardest part was photographing the pure white on the white snow. The camera's autofocus kept finding the other gulls and the turkey but missing the ivory gull. But I managed some great shots. The feather whiteness, the black legs and eyes, the blue hued bill, and the thief-like sneakiness of the gull stand out in my mind. Clearly a northern survivor; it is easy to imagine it picking apart a leftover seal carcass in the arctic.
