Bonaparte's Gull, Mississippi River, Mud Lake, Iowa --------
I’m celebrating my 400th “NATURE CLICKS” today. What was thought as a category for the “occasional” blog post about little details in nature became quickly the platform for my story telling about critters and birds, especially about sightings that don’t happen every day. It is hard to believe that Nature Clicks #1 was posted over 8 years ago!
Today I had to choose from six different stories my photos are telling and I decided to show another migrator here today. We had gorgeous light before sunset down in Mud Lake at the Mississippi River but I was not able to use it for a bunch of Bonaparte’s Gulls who flew north along the shore. The sun was already too far behind the walls of the Mississippi Valley and the low flying gulls were already in the shade.
Here is a little trivia. Bonaparte’s Gulls are named after a nephew of Napoleon, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, who was leading ornithologists in the 1800’s in America and Europe. The Bonaparte’s Gull is the smallest gull over North America and it is the only gull that regularly nests in trees (source: iBirdPro app).
They breed in subarctic North America from Alaska to the Hudson Bay, with other words, these gulls still have a good distance to fly before they reach their summer range.