Ring-billed, Weekapaug

I used to be a much-better-than-average birder, and in those old avian-watching-days, this gull, observed flying over the Weekapaug Breachway, would have been identified in a heartbeat. The gulls can be tricky, but I eventually learned them, and that was a good thing, because in that era, I lived along the coast, and seeing gulls was an everyday occurrence. For better or worse, however, I moved inland, encountered gulls far less frequently, and, in my ongoing attempt to become a more complete naturalist, started working on other forms of life, from lichens to mammals. I also got, let us say, older and discovered, more or less unpleasantly, that accumulating knowledge and expertise can be, past a certain point in one's life,  a zero-sum game: learning new things can mean forgetting old skills. So it went with this gull. All I knew was that I'd seen it before, and I was pretty sure that I'd known it once, but maybe only in a prior life. While I could have been upset, I simply reverted to form and hit the field guides and the birding websites. It's a Ring-billed Gull, a genuine commoner, and a good step to take on what is clearly a Larusian learning, or, more appropriately, re-learning curve.