Quote:
Originally Posted by clydebirder
It is a Lesser Black-backed Gull, the streaking on the head, dark marking on upper mandible and pale tip to bill are all features shown in winter plumage sub-adult LBBG
cheers, John
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Well despite many hours of studying gulls I'm still a very very long way from being an expert - even common species can throw up many surprises. So I'm more than capable of being wrong! But after taking the shadow into account I'm still struggling to see this as dark enough to be LBbG.
I don't understand your comment about the dark marking on the upper mandible and pale tip to the bill - for sure they occur on winter sub-adult LBbG but they also occur on similar stage Yellow-legged Gull don't they?
I concede that the head streaking can look rather similar on adult winter LBbG but usually, especially on a sub-adult, I'd expect it to be more extensive and less well defined. What are you seeing in the head streaking that's wrong for a sub-adult winter Yellow-legged Gull? It looks much like
this one to me.
If anyone's not convinced by the mantle colour and has Photoshop handy, try using the lassoo tool to select the part of the bird that is in shadow and lighten it until the neck sides are nearly as pale as where the shadow doesn't fall. It ends up looking remarkably similar to the two birds below.
14-01-11, 12:23 AM
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