As post count check-ups go, today was pretty successful. I didn't find the Wilson's Warbler, but the spot where it was found is good habitat. The Band-tails turned out to be Rock Pigeons, but that was more of a clerical error than a misidentification.
There's been a wreck of bait fish, mostly Pacific Mackerel in the mouth of the Columbia River and it's attracted many Bald Eagles, I saw 15 today from one spot (44 were seen on the count yesterday). And conservatively 16,000 gulls, a mix of Mew, Herring and Western/Glaucous-wing.
That's how we do Westerns and Glaucous-wings here, with a slash. The Columbia River is just about the center of the zone of hybridization between the two species. We talk in terms of a bird being "mostly" Western or "mostly" Glaucous-winged. Taking the time, from a distance, to try and assess the degree of grayness in the primaries to sort the intermediates from the end points is usually more trouble than it's worth. Heresy, I know, if you're a lariphile, but the way we do things in a world where other stuff needs to get counted, too.
And now through the magic of the internet you can download the studies from Condor and Auk detailing the problems we face here on the lower Columbia.
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v099n03/p0585-p0594.pdf
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v098n03/p0527-p0546.pdf
http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v095n03/p0441-p0458.pdf