Stonefaction
Dundee Birding....(target 150 in 2024).
(Originally posted the text & pic below in Gulls subforum on Dec 14th to a resounding lack of interest in actually ID-ing the bird one way or another... Having looked at the new Gulls book and a few of the other Gull sites, I think this bird is at least 'interesting', though I suspect that more photos (which I unfortunately don't have) would be needed to be certain of Heinei - though perhaps the gull experts on here will be able to rule that possibility out immediately, or give an indication that it 'could' be Heinei. Any input welcome).
"I was looking through some of my old photos and came across what I thought was an interesting looking Common Gull. I eventually managed to find that I'd taken the photo on 7th December 2014, at Monifieth, (by Dundee) on the east coast of Scotland. There has been some discussion on Twitter about the possibility of Heinei race Common Gulls birds turning up in the UK. One of the features to look for mentioned is the unstreaked head in winter, which this bird (almost) has - though there is some faint streaking just visible. However, some of the other features do appear to be more like Canus. I suspect that it won't be anything too special, but I'd rather get an opinion from folk who know gulls ruling out the possibility, rather than wondering about it and trying to reach a decision myself. Unfortunately, I only have the one photo (as although it looked quite striking my knowledge of gull subspecies didn't go any deeper than the possibility of Argentatus Herring Gulls being a possibility locally, even if I couldn't tell them and Argenteus apart)."
"I was looking through some of my old photos and came across what I thought was an interesting looking Common Gull. I eventually managed to find that I'd taken the photo on 7th December 2014, at Monifieth, (by Dundee) on the east coast of Scotland. There has been some discussion on Twitter about the possibility of Heinei race Common Gulls birds turning up in the UK. One of the features to look for mentioned is the unstreaked head in winter, which this bird (almost) has - though there is some faint streaking just visible. However, some of the other features do appear to be more like Canus. I suspect that it won't be anything too special, but I'd rather get an opinion from folk who know gulls ruling out the possibility, rather than wondering about it and trying to reach a decision myself. Unfortunately, I only have the one photo (as although it looked quite striking my knowledge of gull subspecies didn't go any deeper than the possibility of Argentatus Herring Gulls being a possibility locally, even if I couldn't tell them and Argenteus apart)."
