It is not something that happens often, but you could expect to see now and then a rare birdspecies when birding intensifly…During a tour with Stichting Vogelreizen with Aad de Boer as tour leader in Januaru 2014 we surpassed our expectations by observing a species never registered before in Costa Rica…On January 20th during a coffee break en route to the Carara area the group stopped at Caldera at a restaurant with view of a rivermouth close to the coast. Because of low tide we are able to see a group of Gulls on a sandbank with one individual sticking out of the rest in size which we can’t identify at first site using the Costa Rica fieldguide…We study the bird and take several pictures through the telescope for about 15 minutes. Striking characteristic isits big size, much bigger then the Laughing Gulls next to him…Besides that the mystery gull has a black mantle, yellow beak with red dot and pink legs…After consulting other information sources like the Sibley guide of Birds of North America and several internet sites we come to the conclusion that what we saw was the Western Gull or Larus Occidentalis…This species normally lives on the Western Coast of North-America more or less from the Canadian border till Baja California. Our observation has already been confirmed by the Scientific comitee of the AOCR (Asociación Ornitologica de Costa Rica) and will be added to the oficial birdlist of Costa Rica…
