Just a Herring Gull with yellow legs? Latvia (1 Viewer)

Hi again,

Was browsing pics taken last year at the beginning of April @ Kolka, Latvia and stumbled upon this gull with bright yellow legs. Sure there are plenty of yellow legged 'omissus' type Herring Gulls around here but usually their legs are just on the yellowish side and not so bright. But from the wing pattern Herring Gull seems the best fit to me. Unfortunately there are no other pictures. So just a Herring gull?

Thanks in advance! B

hi cerambyx,

this is hellish difficult. usually such quality underwing shots are enough to clinch any of the 3 similar european grey mantled gulls. and to say it clear: such bright yellow legs with that primary pattern and pale irides usually are perfect in line with michahellis, yellow-legged gull, especially eastern ones. which this might indeed be. but: location suggests a big warning!
to go a bit in details: argentatus usually doesn't show such a solid p5 mark, argentatus usually has much larger apical spots (that's how i call the white primary tips) and (nominate) argentatus usually has an all white p10 tip (mirror merged with tip, no subterminal band), argentatus usually has duller yellow legs (if they're yellow). all this features you can take inversly as a good pointer towards michahellis.
but: YLG is pretty rare in the eastern balticum and the odd "omissus" types are common there! on the black sea coast i wouldn't spend a second look to call it a yellow-legged gull, albeit one with long underwing tongues - this is not too rare among eastern michahellis.
in latvia however it is much more probable that this is in fact a younger adult argentatus with very bright yellow legs. the younger age (probably 5cy) accounts for smaller apical spots, p10 subterminal mark and solid p5 mark. there is a small dark spot in bill that also supports the younger age (while being in 'alternate' = breeding plumage). i don't see any red on upper mandible (but this is really hard to tell from the pics) - which would be supportive of michahellis. and i think i see a orangey orbital ring while michahellis has a deep red one. the length of white underwing tongues is also on the extreme long side for YLG. an explication of the very bright yellow legs could be carotinoid containing food which favours yellow and red bright parts in gulls. any other pics of this bird - upperwing, bird on ground? otherwise i tend to see this as an extreme pitfall argentatus herring gull - i've photographed quite some adult looking individuals on gotland last year with solid p5 marks, which i presumed were younger (~4th cycle/5cy) adult herring gulls.

all the best,

Thanks for the in-depth reply Lou! Really appreciate your input! :t:

If I remember correctly than I was out looking for some first spring LBBGs and I think this gull at first even tricked me in to thinking that it was LBBG because it flew out of the sun and in that strong backlight it looked very dark from above. Than it made a few circles overhead in much better lighting conditions it didn't look like LBBG any more. So I kinda lost interest about it and unfortunately dind't try to snap more pictures of it, nor did I examine it more carefully through bins. :-C So can't add to this discussion more than is visible in these pictures.

We have only two accepted records of YLG - 2cy with Croatian ring and 1cy found by Chris Gibbins. Both @ Getlini ladfill. Though I guess they should be around a bit more than that - simply for us, local birders, YLG is still quite a mystery. So most probably some simply go by misidentified. But even with that in mind - I will agree with you that odd Herring gull probably is still much more likely option in this case (as there are no more pictures to analyse).

i'm sure that a few michs wander through latvia annually ....
att. 2 birds from gotland (in estreme strong winds...) with solid p5 mark.