www.gull-research.org

Hi
Bird was distinctly higher than Larus canus. I photographed the bird in Kołobrzeg, NW Poland 06.02.2016

Best wishes
Ryszard

hi ryzsard,

what do you mean by higher. larger? if so, they vary a bit in size within subspecies but heinei is on average larger, especially longer winged. as they also tend to be a less advanced in scap moult (i think a higher percentage than nominate canus), this might be a heinei. but common gull in any case.

best,

lou

yes, I mean larger.
Is possible ID heinei from (good) photos? or must be measured?

i guess, soon there will appear a paper by peter adriaens about identification of heinei in the field.

thank you lou very, very much!

Hi. The paper you mention is now published - see http://www.dutchbirding.nl/news.php?id=1072

It has been a long time coming; we started by being interested in heinei but then expanded to look at all four 'Mew Gull' taxa, so the project took longer to complete than we imagined at the beginning. But anyway, the paper is out so we hope you find it useful.

As always, more work remains to be done but the paper is a start and we hope will help especially with ID of suspected out-of-range birds.

Chris