Mixed Gulls ID, Bavaria
 

Hi,

saw those larger Gulls in our area, Bavaria. Still struggeling with them. First one looks like a Herring or LBBG in cy2? The others Caspian and/or YLGs?

Much appreciated! :t:
(more pics available if needed..)

Cheers
Marcel

More pics please :)

Left one is 2cy LBBG/HG as you said. The 2nd from left and right one are probably Caspians but it's only guess.
The 2nd from right looks good for 2cy Caspian.

hard to tell. the 3 others could be also be YLG.
the dark one is probably a herring gull but even in midwinter there are YLGs that dark.

How often do Herring/LBBG occur during the Winter in Bavaria?

Hi
thanks for those plenty replies!

Actually haven´t heard of a single LBBG this winter ;). Apart from that, size indicates Herring as well. Quite a lot records of it these weeks.

BTW these weren´t the only larger gulls there. Apart from the ones in the picture there were 16 YLG and one ad Caspian.
Pretty plenty records of Caspian in Bavaria (>100 indv last weeks!). So I wouldn´t wonder if all (apart from the Herring) seen in the pic were Caspians. Some showed this Caspian typical albatross habit... All in all I´d say they´re all Caspians!?
I know, hard to tell from a photo. But gizz is one of the main clues of distinguishing those gulls, isn´t it?

Could upload some more pics if wished. Actually have to do this from our other computer :)...

Cheers
Marcel

go ahead, load them up here, they might be helpful. albatrossing is a good caspian feature but sometimes YLG do very similar postures. voices however would be diagnostic. the bills in the two grey backed ind. (3cy? 4cy?) look short and dark which led me more towards michahellis. but they could be caspians as well.

Agree with the above.

Marcel - I would crop the original jpeg into 4 different edits; ie, one for each gull. Sharpen and then save as 1000 megapixels across and then pot each jpeg on here.

Cheers,

Andy.

Here you are:

(original pic already has been cropped before, so the following pics aren´t that brilliant...)

I'm not able to decide about the left hand bird from pic1, but IMHO all the others are rather Yellow-legged Gulls...