Gulls in the middle of Vt with water nowhere close (1 Viewer)

I was out working in the fields and had my camera with me. Was watching a pair of crows just chasing each other and flying in unison for over 2 hours and while taking photos of them saw the birds shown here in a kettle circling above the crows. I have been participating a little in a hawk watch on Putney mountain and it looked like a kettle of hawks, but the bird looked a bit strange as the wings were too long. At the time the only thing that came to mind was the gray ghost. Processing the pictures it appears that they were clearly gulls. Circling and gaining altitude before they streamed off. I am not good enough at gulls to even guess what these are. Totally unexpected and made my day. I hope someone here can tell me what they are. The first pic shows the crows to the left with the gulls off to the right, but definitely much higher so the birds were much larger than the crows.

Can't definitely identify them from these small pics, but likely either Ring-billed Gulls or American Herring Gulls (or both!).

Thanks Nutcracker.

The birds were quite high and far away. I took the pics with a 400 lens and still had to crop quite a bit to show the birds. Ring billed gulls are the predominant species on lake Champlain 2 hours drive north of me, but herring gulls are there as well. Gulls are totally foreign in my neck of the woods. Only rare flyovers like this.

We often see gulls at the Bake Oven Knob hawkwatch here in PA. They don't often kettle, but it happens.

And for the record, ring-billed gulls in our area in winter do not always congregate at bodies of water. They're quite common in parking lots of shopping centers and malls. OTOH, lesser-black backed and herring gulls are always found near water.

Jeff hopkins said:

OTOH, lesser-black backed and herring gulls are always found near water.

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Odd, as over here, LBB (and European Herring) are frequently well away from water, though it may depend on your definition of 'near'.

Herring Gulls, in fact, are very often found away from water. Shopping centers, landfills, etc.

Thanks for all the help. I'm going with Herring gulls, which doesn't surprise me. Like I said, I've never seen a gull anywhere near our property before, so this is a life bird for my home.

I've seen this on countless occasions in prairie Canada as well as California. It's usually California gull that is the suspect in my cases, but ring-billed, herring, Bonaparte's, pretty much any gull can be involved.

You'd be surprised how far inland our "seagulls" can be seen. Some species are more likely inland in fact, for instance Franklin's gull.