Ellington Gulls

[Ross Ahmed]

In my recent experience Ellington Tip area (including Linton Lane NR and surrounding fields) is one of the best sites to study gulls in the North-east. Visited site a few times in winter, but now armed with a camera, I'm going to try to make occasional visits.

To unearth something like a American Herring Gull or Caspian Gull would be awesome, but visits should provide an excellent opportunity to study large gulls. I will post on here any photos of interesting birds, and perhaps link posts to ID Q&A section. All comments very welcome!

Spent couple of hours in hide yest pm at Linton Lane. Not too much of interest, but have still included a few photos below. Perhaps several hundred large gulls visited over the period - many of which staying only briefly.

Pic. 1: ad Common Gull - beginning moult of primaries

Pic. 2: LBB Gull - presumably a moulting 3rd cal yr bird. The combination of mainly dark wings and dark eye in early July reminded me of 2cy fuscus, but relatively pale wings point away from this

Pic 3: 2nd-sum Herring Gull - combination of dark-looking mantle feathers, washed out bill and sparse dark markings on greater coverts perhaps suggest argentatus?

Pic 4: portrait of 2nd-year Herring Gull

[woodhornbirder]

Are you insane? :)

Gulls are a bit of a nightmare! spent a few hours myself in linton hide this year, and the variation of plumage is just unreal.

HOpe you find something interesting tho!

[Ross Ahmed]

Couple of hours this pm was often gull-less, but focussed on looking at primary patterns of adult Herring Gulls.

Of 8 birds below, half (birds 1, 4, 5 and 6) show black on P5 - traits of both Yellow-legged Gull and American Herring Gull.

Also visible is a large variation in amount of white on P9 and P10 - particularly bird 7/8, which also shows only small amount of black on P6, possibly indicating argentatus.

Bird in 3rd post is interesting, showing following features often associated with American Herring Gull:
Generally uniform upperwing
Strongly marked belly/underparts
Large bill
Very dark underwing covs

Bird has unfortunately lost most of it's tail, and barring on rump is tricky to gauge.

[Ross Ahmed]

Birds 5-8

[Ross Ahmed]

Am Herring Gull lookalike

[Ross Ahmed]

After mulling over it, believe bird above could be a slightly odd-looking (worn) GBB Gull.

[JANJ]

Hello Ross.

Haven´t seen your post before.

I think 3cy type LBBG - graellsii/intermedius for the gull in first post. The obvios contrast between upperparts and fairly dark primaries indicate this.

http://www.gull-research.org/lbbg3cyb/lbbg3cyjuly.html

http://www.gull-research.org/papers/14muusse.pdf

The Herring Gull in pic. 3 might be argentatus or argenteus, diffcult to say for sure in this case, variation and overlap in certain characters stands for that.
3cy type with worn 2nd gen. primaries with no sign of white tipped primaries.
It as a slight tendency to darker scapulars.

In 4 a 3cy type - unifom inner primaries with no trace of dark markings.

The Herrings in posts 3 & 4 demonstrates the variation in primary pattern. The markings on p5 are not complete on both webs, with only a dark spot on outer web of 4, 5 & 6, and on both webs in nr 1, not good for michahellis at least! This put together and from these images they could be either argenteus or argentatus. However the p-pattern on gull 7/8 might indicate argentatus.

http://cyberbirding.uib.no/gull/ind_hg.php

The last 2cy seems better for Herring (European) compared to GBBG (although some females of GBBG approach Herring in size, and I´m in fact not entierly sure here) on bill size/shape size of the eye and structure. In American Herring at this age I would expect darker underparts and more patterned undertail coverts.

JAnJ