Two Gulls and a Gull

Two Herring Gulls and a Great Black-backed Gull on the shore of the Raritan River yesterday afternoon.

When I posted a link to the photo on Twitter  last night, a follower commented that the water looks terrible. The river does have some pollution problems, and the visual perception probably is not helped by the plastic hose partially submerged in the water. There are a couple of other factors at play, though. One is that the river is at or near low tide, and it often looks and smells worse at that point in the day. We also have just had two days of rain, so the river includes a lot of runoff – both road runoff and eroded sediments. I am not sure that the river in this stretch is ever really clear, but sometimes it looks dirtier than others.