Gulls!!! (1 Viewer)

Hi all.

Well they are the only thing keeping me going (in terms of birding) during the winter. So here we go. Came across alot of good gulls today. Found two adult ring billed gulls and a first winter iceland gull at my patch and saw a 2nd w glaucous gull which i found as a first winter last jan. But i just need some clarification on two others. They are prob first of all an argenteus herring gull and a 1st winter lbb. But they seem a little strange. I just need some clarification
The herring gull has not streaking whatsoever to the head which rang alarm bells at first for caspian but im pretty sure im ok on that one... but why no streaking?? Secondly the presumed 1st lbb looked unusually dark in a chocolaty brown kinda way so i said i better make sure with tht too. SO please take a look at the pics and give me your opinions.

Thanks in advance.

Seán.

One more pic of one of the ringers!

Yep, Herring Gull and 1w Lesser Black-backed. Not sure why its unstreaked but gulls are so variable that I'm sure you will get the odd clean-headed bird...

wrexile1 said:

Not sure why its unstreaked but gulls are so variable that I'm sure you will get the odd clean-headed bird...

Click to expand...

Hi,

You can find this in the "Gulls" of O. and L. (p.260) : :"a small minority white headed throughout winter (apparently birds aged >15 years)"

I had the same problem last year (mid november) with a "white-headed" Herring in Switzerland.

Best regards

Stéphane

Hi Stéphane


Thank very much. That explains it then. Actually a friend of mine did mention that the older gulls often don't acquire the streaking at all when very old.
Much appreciated,

Seán.

Ronayne88 said:

Hi Stéphane


Thank very much. That explains it then. Actually a friend of mine did mention that the older gulls often don't acquire the streaking at all when very old.
Much appreciated,

Seán.

Click to expand...

The amount of head streaking does very in LWHG's between individuals and I've also heard that older birds generally show less streaking than younger ones.

Had the same problem at Chasewater last week - a perfectly clean headed bird, that was the same structure and mantle couloration as the surrounding argenteus, put it down as Herring Gull, interesting to learn that this is generally in older gulls. Nice one with the 2 RBGs by the way Sean, seems these storms have chucked a few waifs our way....

Thanks everyone.