King Stag

A male White-tailed Deer has appeared with the biggest multi-point rack of antlers that I have ever seen. He seems to have a girl friend as well (not exactly surprising considering how well endowed he is!). There has been no sign of the doe (a different female I am sure) and her two fauns since the fox started coming round but King Stag is probably well equipped to take on a pesky fox.

Ring-billed Gulls have appeared in some numbers. They were all over the sand flats at low tide yesterday at Cupsogue and have also appeared here on Weesuck Creek. Although we think of Ring-bills as a common local species, they don't breed here and are actually scarce in the spring and early summer; like the Great Blue Heron and Royal Tern, they appear here in some numbers only in mid-summer. There was a beautiful specimen sitting on a post at a neighbor's dock this morning. I would guess that these birds have a post-breeding molt as this one was in snow-white plumage with dipped-in-ink wing tips, a startling ring of red skin around a pale eye and, of course, bright yellow legs and bill with the eponymous black ring around the bill.

I forgot to mention the loon in non-breeding plumage that was sitting in the ocean near the shore at Cupsogue beach yesterday morning. Alas, it looked much too big to be the Pacific Loon that was recently reported flying by in the area so we'll have to put it down as a summering Common Loon.

I may have finally have figured out one of the skippers. This was a fairly good-sized butterfly flying and perching in the phragmites on the trail up to the head of the marsh. It had a very distinctive orange pattern on the hindwing (a longer orange dash with shorter dashes on each side), whitish spots on the forewing and pale yellowish bars on a dirty yellowish underwing. I think this was a female Broad-winged Skipper, a butterfly that occurs in our area and uses phragmites as a food plant for its larvae.

Eric Salzman