birdmeister
Well-known member
Hello all,
I observed an odd gull this afternoon at my local reservoir, unfortunately in fairly poor light with the setting sun. Hopefully I'll get back tomorrow and it will still be there.
Here are the comments I entered after arriving home:
"Flew in during late afternoon, arriving slowly like LBBG and Herring Gulls do (unlike Ring-billed's twists and turns). Flight views once I realized it was different were brief, but I thought it had a pale window near the wingtips, similar to those of other immature gulls.
When perched, the bird looked very "frosty" and pale above. It had an odd pale wing panel of sorts on the folded wing. A few features almost suggested Iceland Gull to me, but other features clearly went against that. Size-wise it was similar to LBBG, smaller than Herring. I thought it had a more rounded head like Iceland, unlike the flat and angular heads of the adult and young LBBGs. To my eye, it looked like there were some very pale gray mantle feathers coming in, which would go totally against LBBG. However, the wingtips looked very dark, going strongly against Iceland Gull. When I really zoomed in on photos, it appears there may be slightly paler spots, but these are not claimable based on the lighting and photos. Another feature that I thought went against Iceland was the very bold dark chevrons/anchor marks on the scapulars/mantle."
My guess is that the easiest explanation for this bird is a paler-than-normal LBBG. However, I found it hard to shake the few Iceland features that I seemed to get while watching the bird.
I'll attach multiple photos below, as well as the palest immature LBBG that I could find among 45 or so that were present. I suspect that aging this mystery gull is very important, which I'm not good at. Some images provide direct head/bill shape comparison to both Herring and LBBG, while the 5th image in this post was under a different exposure, one that better illustrated how pale this bird looked in the field.
I observed an odd gull this afternoon at my local reservoir, unfortunately in fairly poor light with the setting sun. Hopefully I'll get back tomorrow and it will still be there.
Here are the comments I entered after arriving home:
"Flew in during late afternoon, arriving slowly like LBBG and Herring Gulls do (unlike Ring-billed's twists and turns). Flight views once I realized it was different were brief, but I thought it had a pale window near the wingtips, similar to those of other immature gulls.
When perched, the bird looked very "frosty" and pale above. It had an odd pale wing panel of sorts on the folded wing. A few features almost suggested Iceland Gull to me, but other features clearly went against that. Size-wise it was similar to LBBG, smaller than Herring. I thought it had a more rounded head like Iceland, unlike the flat and angular heads of the adult and young LBBGs. To my eye, it looked like there were some very pale gray mantle feathers coming in, which would go totally against LBBG. However, the wingtips looked very dark, going strongly against Iceland Gull. When I really zoomed in on photos, it appears there may be slightly paler spots, but these are not claimable based on the lighting and photos. Another feature that I thought went against Iceland was the very bold dark chevrons/anchor marks on the scapulars/mantle."
My guess is that the easiest explanation for this bird is a paler-than-normal LBBG. However, I found it hard to shake the few Iceland features that I seemed to get while watching the bird.
I'll attach multiple photos below, as well as the palest immature LBBG that I could find among 45 or so that were present. I suspect that aging this mystery gull is very important, which I'm not good at. Some images provide direct head/bill shape comparison to both Herring and LBBG, while the 5th image in this post was under a different exposure, one that better illustrated how pale this bird looked in the field.