1st-winter gull, UK (1 Viewer)

teamsaint · Nov 25, 2017

One for the gull experts to help me with. I saw this 1st-winter a few weeks ago in southern England. I made the following notes:

- Head white with a dark mask
- Breast white with some streaking/spotting
- Tertials dark with neat white edges
- Long-winged
- Bill all dark with obvious gonys angle

Is it a Yellow-legged Gull?

SteveClifton · Nov 25, 2017

Hard to be 100% certain but it certainly ought to be one with such a white head and breast. In my experience very few 1cy Herring look so pale so early in the 'winter'. You'd really like to see the extent of moult in the wing coverts, but due to the image quality (taken on a phone?) the detail is very vague. However there does seem to be some moult going on e.g. in pic 1. It also has a nice contrasy tail which looks good for 1cy YLG. I'd almost certainly log it as one

teamsaint · Nov 26, 2017

Thanks for your thoughts Steve, I do see a number of 1st-winter Herring Gulls at this site with white heads, but felt all the other features on this bird pointed to YLG rather than Herring

balex78 · Nov 29, 2017

Ylg for me too

1st-winter gull, UK (1 Viewer)

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