[tom mckinney]

Originally Posted by Harry Hussey

Hi Tom,
I have since been told(Mullofkintyre pers.comm.) that the desire to conquer Europe has also been shown to be a feature of other large gull sp,in particular Napoleon's Gull(Larus theotherbonapartensis),but this species has only occurred as far as Belgium(Waterloo),and is an unlikely vagrant.
Harry

Ah yes, but Garnish believes that Napoleon's Gull is a ssp of Fellatio Gull and apparently Svordfish now has evidence that Fellatio and Gonad's Gull may indeed be different plumage morphs of the same bird. Napoleon's Gull apparently migrates first followed by Fellatio Gull which follows Napoleon's migration path in an eternal conquest for justice.

Mckinney, Tom, Nicholas et al ...

[Bluetail]

Hey up, Tomato, you'll get accused of talking a load of gonads!

[Motmot]

There was only one who got bored with this thread and he's not nice, to say the least, on any of his posts. Why bother?

[benji]

Its getting better zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sense of humour failure tester - when I make the legs yellow in Adobe, the beak is green.

[benji]

Originally Posted by Ian Peters

OK fair enough, in that context I see why people jumped on me for my comment and apologies for that part. I did not want to reply to Benji direct because I managed to upset someone last week for pointing out that a post was inflamatory. Everyone started saying things about misunderstandings of translation on that thread and I have read today another thread (I stayed out of that one) where the same thing is happening and that made me wary of posting directly at Benji.

This is getting really soap like - Which one?? I am intrigued!

[Binocularface]

Hi

I had a look for the gull again today, but could not find it!
However I did find this one only 3 miles away!

Regards
Tristan

[benji]

Originally Posted by Tristan R

Hi

I had a look for the gull again today, but could not find it!
However I did find this one only 3 miles away!

Regards
Tristan

Oh oh

[benji]

Is it a Herring Gull?

[Stephen Dunstan]

Tris,

Do yourself a favour, set up another thread. Call it 'one for saddos who are far too interested in gulls' and put these new pictures there instead. That way anyone who is bored by it all / has other priorities in life (both equally valid) has no excuse for getting into the thread and finding it isn't what they were expecting.

Regards,

Stephen.

[Edward woodwood]

what's Adobe got to do with anything?

Tris saw legs - they were dull yellow - make em whatever colour you like at home.Thought it was boring? Can't be bothered mys....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

a GI once said to Picasso 'your pictures are crap - they're nothing like real life'

Picasso asked to see a wallet photo of the guy's girlfriend and replied 'she's not really that small is she?'.....

[Edward woodwood]

Benji.....Easy Tiger!

[Quark5]

Originally Posted by tom mckinney

Ah yes, but Garnish believes that Napoleon's Gull is a ssp of Fellatio Gull and apparently Svordfish now has evidence that Fellatio and Gonad's Gull may indeed be different plumage morphs of the same bird. Napoleon's Gull apparently migrates first followed by Fellatio Gull which follows Napoleon's migration path in an eternal conquest for justice.

Mckinney, Tom, Nicholas et al ...

Mr Mckinney
I am dissapointed that having been shot out the sky for applying an anthropomorphic term to a pigeon, that I read a sense of justice being applied to gulls.

[foxsparrow]

Originally Posted by Tristan R

I had a look for the gull again today, but could not find it!
However I did find this one only 3 miles away!Tristan

Please, look at the third photo. Look at the bill shape. According my experience about Yellow-legged Gulls and dozen of Herring argentatus gulls in NE Italy, the bill is absolutely typical for Herring Gull and absolutely not usual for Yellow-legged Gull. Finally, according to me, the first post is NOT a Yellow-legged Gull; it may be an argentatus or, more probable, an hybryd.

Cheers

[Stephen Dunstan]

This bird isn't fully adult, my understanding is the authorities on such things don't believe you can split YL Gulls from hybrids until they are fully adult anyway.

Let's not go there...

Stephen.

[Edward woodwood]

true but you could lay odds Stephen.....

u a betting man?

[Stephen Dunstan]

If anybody hasn't seen it I recommend the article on hybrids on Surfbirds (by Peter Adriaens I think). It shows just how frequent they are, and the surprising variety that occur.

Stephen.

[Stephen Dunstan]

Originally Posted by Tim Allwood

true but you could lay odds Stephen.....

u a betting man?

Tim - not where the 'Herring - LBBG' complex is concerned! Stephen.

[Nightranger]

Originally Posted by Harry Hussey

Hi Ian,

I hope that you will remember that,as things stand,I haven't actually contradicted the proposed ID as Yellow-legged Gull,merely pointed out the difficulties inherent in proving this.As I said,if this was an obvious michahellis with bright yellow legs etc then the pics would never have been posted to the identification section,as Tristan would have known what it was.
I have no pathological need to be 'right' in cases such as this,and indeed have often learned a lot from being wrong!I take field ID very seriously,and try to weigh up the available evidence,always with the proviso that my original call may well have been incorrect.I am glad that you state that 'neither are they are bad birder for getting it wrong.',as I have often been wrong,and will be again....
I really hope that I'm not one of those that you class as being 'elitist'?I am always willing to recognise my own limitations in the field,and will share what I know with others,as I in turn often learn from them.Will talk to ANYONE who has a genuine interest in birds,whether that be cutting edge ID or someone who feeds the ducks in the local park,or anything in between.
All the best,
Harry

Easy Harry, I definitely did not name anyone with regard to "wanting to be right".

I am genuinely interested in this thread from a zoologists point of view because of the splitting issue. I have to confess that I am not a great fan of splitting species up unless there is compelling evidence in support. With this in mind, I am genuinely interested in how we separate the birds in the field because it is particularly interesting (not to mention, relevant) to the idea of splitting in the first place. I certainly would not dispute splitting rock, buff-bellied and water pipit of but I am intrigued by the YLG/herring gull split.

[Jane Turner]

*makes notes never to look at large white headed gulls again*

Anyone would think its mid summer and there wasn't much about!



and Ian... you haven't seen enough iffy Scandi Rock pipits or Darrell's Pipit if you don't have an inkling of doubt about Water/Rock/Buff-bellied pipits :)

[StevieEvans]

Jane,

how's about sending Ian a couple of hybrid pipits......a nice Scandi-Rock x Mipit would be as good a starting point as any...........

Steve.

[Nightranger]

Originally Posted by Jane Turner

and Ian... you haven't seen enough iffy Scandi Rock pipits or Darrell's Pipit if you don't have an inkling of doubt about Water/Rock/Buff-bellied pipits :)

Aargh!!!!!! Point taken but I was thinking more about geographical separation in the pipit case of which there is (he says, expecting a barrage of replies) a better case than separating YLG/herring gulls. The genetic study (by my ex-Bangor colleague Stuart Piertney) on the crossbills was enlightening in this respect because the morphology/non-breeding separation of the three species was more marked than the genetic proof. Sheesh! It aint easy this 'ere speciation business.

[Edward woodwood]

speciation is fairly straightforward if you have criteria you stick to such as the new guidelines by helbig et al. being used by BOU tax. committee or even the 'older' more straight forward concepts such as PSC ESC and BSC. All you have to do is employ them strictly.

The problem comes with birders trying to put a name at species level to everything they see........and premature splitting.

nice to see no one fancies doing the gull above!.......or do they?

[Nightranger]

Originally Posted by Tim Allwood

The problem comes with birders trying to put a name at species level to everything they see........and premature splitting.

nice to see no one fancies doing the gull above!.......or do they?

I couldn't agree with you more. I am not against splitting as such but we have to realise that it is far from easy. The crossbills proved to have less genetic difference than we would expect in most (proven) subspecies yet they are clearly distinct morhpologically if not geographically. The morphological question is tricky especially as classic Linnaean definitions break down with wildfowl because captive escapes do not recognise wild behaviour and hybridise readily. The Aythyas are the worst but they are not the sole villains (this is another argument, albeit less well known against wildlfowl collections). This means we should (but there is no practical way of doing so) consider behaviour along with morphology and geographical separation.

BTW, is that "doing the gull" in the bibilcal sense...LOL?

[Jasonbirder]

Don`t genetic distances lag behind morphological differences as birds adapt to changing circumstances? So lack of difference in DNA would only indicate a relatively new species/race wouldn`t it?

[Nightranger]

Originally Posted by Jasonbirder

Don`t genetic distances lag behind morphological differences as birds adapt to changing circumstances? So lack of difference in DNA would only indicate a relatively new species/race wouldn`t it?

In theory that is true especially if we look at chihuahua and Irish wolfhounds to explain how different creatures can be without being a separate species genetically. However, there are examples where other factors are more important and pipits are right in there visually. There is a lot of work to do but many of the issues will not be resolved in the immediate future because they would simply be paper exercises. For instance, it was very important to figure what was going on with 'inland' cormorants as it is for the red grouse work also carried out by Dr Piertney. However, it is not easy to justify the importance of defining YLG and herring gull at this point in time (assuming it hasn't been done) except to bird watchers. Coming back to the point, the greater the genetic differences then the greater the two or more species are from separation [at least that is the initial assumption - Stephen Jay Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium would slightly invalidate this assumption] therefore, the assumption is that crossbills have morphologically, (to a point) geographically and behaviourally relatively recently. However by the converse reasoning we probably cannot say that morphologically similar species are closely related with one of the best (most familiar) examples being chiffchaff-willow warbler (many of the warblers would do for this purpose). Although I have left something out here because voice or song is another aspect (this works for warblers) although chaffinches have regional accents to complicate matters.