Gull help please (1 Viewer)

"I favour lumping all the large white-headed gulls into one species. The applicable species name is the first-named, which is Larus marinus Linnaeus 1758.

i.e., Sea Gull."

Although obviously meant tongue in cheek this might actually be a viable first step. Then, of course, people would start to notice that different populations of Sea Gull look and behave differently and don't seem to interbreed that freely, subspecies would be named and then people would start to wonder whether these would be better regarded as full species and we would come full circle to the present state of uncertainty.

It's only our natural desire to organise and categorise that causes a problem, the gulls themselves don't care what we call them.


Dave

Jason

(East) Siberian Gull or Vega Gull as it has also been called is polytypic as i mentioned above including mongolicus (sometimes split off as Mongolian Gull) and vegae. It has alos included a form birulai and this form has been called Birula's Gull.

in one of my other great passions, football, we always say 'keep it simple' Er....not so with gulls!

So is calling any Large White Headed Gull - a Herring Gull, the Gull ID equivelent of "route 1" ?

Tim Allwood said:

four of them (French, Swedes, Germans and Dutch) have accepted the 6-way split of

Herring argentatus and argenteus
American Herring smithsonianus
Eaast Siberian vegae and mongolicus
Caspian cachinnans
Yellow-legged michahellis and atlantis
Armenian armenicus

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Just to confuse matters even further, don't some authorities (Sibley & Monroe?) lump the yellow-legged forms together (cachinnans, micahellis, atlantis, armenicus , maybe the siberian gulls also) as a seperate species from argentatus & argenteus (not sure where the american fits in)?

yeah James, it's a complete mess with different authors choosing their own taxonomy as fits their opinions. As there is so much uncertainty and work in progress, once people start 'jumping the gun' it gets messy. It could take a long long long time to sort it out - and it may not even be sortable at present. Cachinnans vs argetatus is the big sticking point Yellow-legged end at moment. And doing atlantis from michahellis

Jason - route 1 - I like it!

godwit said:

"I favour lumping all the large white-headed gulls into one species. The applicable species name is the first-named, which is Larus marinus Linnaeus 1758.

i.e., Sea Gull."

Although obviously meant tongue in cheek this might actually be a viable first step.

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One very famous top ornithologist came very close to doing so . . . although Linnaeus would have been very familiar with Herring Gulls, the only large gulls he accepted specific rank for were L. marinus and L. fuscus. Herring Gull didn't make the grade as far as Linnaeus was concerned; it only got formally named 5 years later, when Pontoppidan described it as distinct

Michael

Tim, I guess you're just trying to wind me up when you say "of those whose opinions matter" That would be the people who write books/articles stating "facts", and then discover they got it wrong perhaps?

You're absolutely right when you say that the whole thing is a mess and won't be sorted out any time soon. People have without doubt been "jumping the gun" for far too long, and been allowed to make claims that just can't be backed up properly. It's just not possible to be certain 100% of the time (as this thread proves), because the "starting-point" is just so uncertain: and I think that we're doing a dis-service to the upcoming generations of birders by making them feel hopelessly inadequate by not admitting just how difficult we find all of this...
As you say, studies are so incomplete that new stuff is being found all the time - particularly about gulls of the Far East where there has been a great deal of unresearched opinion being put forward as fact in the past. I read in Birding World, for example, that vegae and smithsonianus have recently been found to extensively share mitochondrial genes (no surprise there when you see different populations from a wide area), which has certainly heated up the debate in East Asia and will no doubt cause problems for anyone who says that such-and-such gull (particularly a non-adult) is DEFINITELY, WITHOUT ANY DOUBT a particular species. Also, I think it's very unlikely that mongolicus is a form of vegae as we get told by "those whose opinions..." etc etc - they have consistent morphological differences as adults, have consistent differences in their immature plumages, have different habitat requirements on both the wintering and summering grounds, apparently don't interbreed...They appear to be part of a clade that includes vegae, but apparently mongolicus is closely related to Slaty-backed Gull (L schistisagus), and I think it's more likely that mongolicus itself forms several incipient species...of course, I've not researched that, so I could be wrong!!
And what the Hell is going to happen with the "Heuglin's" bunch when someone actually gets out to the breeding grounds of different populations then follows up with studies on the wintering grounds...

Gulls - can't live with them, can't blinking identify them...I'll leave identification to those who stridently say that they know better than the rest of us...

wise words Charlie

best we stick to races and showing characters of for a good time yet for several of these 'forms'

interesting thoughts on mongolicus probably something in it I guess. Another point of interest is that a lot of reasearch on gulls has been done by Russians and is not wel known in the 'west'. They tend to be a bit more conservative than the current vogue in west pal and consequently although their work is often mentioned it is kind of glossed over a bit....

Hi Tim,

Tim Allwood said:

the dutch have gone further and split Lesser Black back as above into Baltic Gull (fuscus) and Lesser Black-backed (graellsii)
this split is very contentious though.....

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So contentious, in fact, that the Dutch have recently reversed their earlier decision and now treat fuscus as the nominate race of Lesser Black-backed Gull once more....
Harry

Blimey i`m not sure i`d want to follow the lead of Russian scientists on anything.....they`ve not exactly been a rip-roaring success at anything else
With obvious apologies to any Russian members

Interesting - in botany, the Russians are the biggest splitters, and the Dutch the biggest lumpers . . .

Michael

The Russian ornithologists have been doing a lot of research, but as far as I'm aware (and as ever, I may be totally wrong) they've not been doing follow-up studies on the wintering grounds - which has to be important from both a morphological point of view, and for discovering whether similar-looking populations of adult gulls coming from a vast, apparently contiguous breeding area are in fact using different wintering areas/habitats which may suggest that they're not as closely related as first appears.

Also, without knowing EXACTLY which birds they're calling eg "Type A" or "Type B", we've got no way of knowing if we're all looking at the same birds in the first place or not.

I guess language problems would be one of the first hurdles to overcome!!

It's damn tricky out there...I might just stay indoors )

Michael Frankis said:

I favour lumping all the large white-headed gulls into one species. The applicable species name is the first-named, which is Larus marinus Linnaeus 1758.

i.e., Sea Gull.

:king:

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Will that include Larus Rubbish dumpusae?

Charlie M said:

The Russian ornithologists have been doing a lot of research, but as far as I'm aware they've not been doing follow-up studies on the wintering grounds

I guess language problems would be one of the first hurdles to overcome!!

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Language is a bit of a problem, but nothing like so bad as lack of funding & visas for travel to, and research time in, the wintering grounds - Russian scientists don't have much money (if any!)

Some of the wintering grounds are inaccessible as well - any volunteers for researching the gulls wintering in Somalia, or Iraq??

Michael

benji said:

Will that include Larus Rubbish dumpusae?

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No, that's a distinct species, readily distinguished by having only one leg. As I'm sure you know, number of legs is an important classification feature in the Animal Kingdom.

Michael

Having thought long and hard about the LWHG situation I have had a religious moment - for too long now I have followed the path of the "splitter" hoping that by demonstrating my faith one day I would be rewarded with 3 new UK "ticks" but i`ve decided - following this path has lead me to the following -

Spending a fortune on Books, Videos and publications (foreign and British).

Long, boring and vaguely unsatisfying conversations about Mantle colouration, the importance of bare part colouration in intraspecific seperation and how primary projection can be an indicator of different feeding strategies.

Standing around in the cold at rubbish tips and outflows with friends looking at hundreds of Herring Gulls whilst talking about moult, feather abrasion and bleaching until one of us cracks and we are reduced to calling the one that comes to garlic bread first as a Yellow-legged Gull (the mediterranean connection you see!)

Long and interminable trips to Cornwall and Scotland to stand at more picturesque locations (fish factories, outflows, fields being sprayed with manure) looking at more Herring Gulls whilst shouting out randomly phrases such as "Dark Covert Bar", "Barred Uppertail Coverts" and "Fierce Expression" to friends desperately trying to feign an interest whilst secretly wishing we could go and look at some divers.

If we just stick to Herring Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls I can see them both in the field at the end of my road - job done!

Got there years ago, Jason! I'm happy in my own little world; they know me here.

Jason.. Even with just HG nd LBBG you can even have a little bit of excitement with...

showing characteristics of this or that race! You just don't have to take it too seriously

LBBGs - no probs, they're easy! HGs... hmm... there's this little voice in my ear telling me you've got to take it seriously before you can begin to tell whether it's showing the characteristics of any particular race!!!