Gull Identity Crisis (1 Viewer)

I took up birding seriously again about 2 years ago, after a long period of abstinence. Back in my earlier birding phase, I always had ID problems with Gulls, especially in the juvenile phases. Since returning to this hobby I find things had gotten far worse, where the hell have all these new species come from? Yellow Leg & Caspian? They all look like Herring Gulls to me.

This sounds like a cunning plan by all the twitchers out there to up the tick list by a couple of notches. I would not be surprised to find in a few years time yet more new gulls this time the only way to split then is by DNA analysis or a very expensive scope with built in scanners (such as used in Star Trek)

Paul 3

That´s gulls!

Well, in Denmark we have had a lot of weird gulls in the last few years, among them several "american´s". I know that a new guide called (something like...if my memmory serves me right) "European Seabird Identification". You might want to keep Your eyes open for that one, even though I don´t know (yet) if it infact will be usefull or just another space occupied on the bookshelf. Anyway, the ever popular Collin´s Guide for Europe has proven quite usefull even in "hardies" such as juv. gull´s and calidris-waders. Still many gull´s will without doubt be left as "un-id´ed" even by the most hardcore and experianced birder! If you wan´t another "funny" group, come to South America and try id´ing all those small grey tyrant-flycatchers down here...:t: