2. winter gull - dark Herring or LBB?

[JanJ]

Thanks to Mars & Greg for suggestions as to - at least - Gregs bird, which indeed is interesting. Of course a piece of guessing work, inspite of earlier words about the exlusion of other possibilities than Herring, which anyway also was an atempt to set others going!

Below are two dark Herrings from Kent Olsen's Blog.
The first is from 9.11 2005, the other from 3.10 2010

JanJ

[grzegorzneubauer]

Thanks Jan, again a similar phenotype. Personally I'd be careful when labeling them as 'dark Herrings'. They are Herrings only if we assume that they are (rare plumage variant of) Herrings, not sth else...
One more general thing about id makes me thinking: if we are able to say that some 'atypical' birds seen or photographed in C or W Europe are not cachinnans (eg because they have bold piano on GC or mantle/scaps strongly barred etc. etc.), but most likely hybrids, it means that we are careful with making id of cachinnans in C & W Europe. We accept identifications as 'cachinnans' only in most 'typical' cases, where all or nearly all features fit this species. This is perhaps because we know that arg and cach regularly hybridize in C Europe and thus we expect some intermediates (hybrids) to be found. And that's ok. Shouldn't we apply this careful approach to other birds/species as well? That is, if such odd birds as in this topic are posted, we - I hope - agree that they do differ 'a bit' from typical Herring of this age and do not label them 'Herring Gull'. Especially that we don't know too much about what is going on with species/taxa in certain parts of their range, so almost everything is possible. To simplify: an odd-looking bird without ring and/or known parents should perhaps always be left unidentified, as hybridization in gulls is very common (compared to other avian groups).
Best,
G

PS as we all like guesswork and to start a new topic somehow, I think you may want to have a look here: http://gneubauer.republika.pl/Selitba1.html (an illustration of what can be found in Eastern colonies...). Some gulls from C/SE part of European Russia (Selitba Lake: 53°10'11.04"N, 46°50'9.84"E). Any comments on id welcome, I wrote the labels to these pics very quickly yesterday evening.

[JanJ]

Ongoing reminder Greg, which really shouldn´t come as a big surprice when dealing with LWHG! Careful with those subject "Herring" types, yes!
In the 70´s I documented (close range) huge numbers of Herring Gulls from the west coast of southern Sweden on slides, mostly 1-3cy and a few of those where quite similar to some of the subject ones here on this thread, remembering that I could (in these days) only label them as odd Herrings. Sadly ( )they all disapeared - along with other items in a turbelent move shortly after!

Interesting link to the Selitba lake gulls! The much elsewhere debated, lack of a dark mark on p5 or not and it´s shape, is also well shown in these images.

Further sets comes to mind (there are of course numerous more)

http://www.elisanet.fi/antero.lindholm/ ... alzyn.html
http://www.elisanet.fi/antero.lindholm/ ... urals.html

JanJ

[Hans Larsson]

Nice pics Greg! To my eyes the darker ones seems to fit what would be expected from barabensis. But could the last pair be Caspians after all? Grey tones are always difficult from photos, but they look quite pale and also p10-pattern along with large white tips may indicate cachinnans. Also from the photos only, I have difficulties separating the 3cy labelled heuglini from barabensis. Regarding the darker "HEGU" types that seems to be rare but frequent in the Baltic Sea area, my guess is that they represent a HEGU variant (as well as other colour variations among HEGU), but to be honest, it´s impossible to be certain of course. The day we know everything about LWHG´s will be very boring, indeed..
/Hans

[grzegorzneubauer]

Hi,
thanks for comments Jan & Hans. All labels are tentative. In general, yes I agree that they fit barabas, what would support its expansion westwards (and breeding in Europe). I'll be back to this topic soon with other pics.
Concerning the pair, they could be cachs, yes, albeit seemed a bit darker (female at least).
The 3cys... uhh, nice would be to know how to separate heu from baraba - the one here looked dark enough to me, but...of course it could be either taxon.
Getting back to dark birds, todays aberrant 'dark HEGU' (this time [almost] no doubt its argentatus), a bit problematic ageing for me but looking more like a 3rd winter (??? hm can you say what excludes 2nd?), from my local patch in Gdansk. Certainly there is a lot of variation with continuous change from typical pale birds to such like this one. I met a bird with so (many) darkbrown coverts contrasting with pale pp1-5 (seen properly only on 039a) for the first time.
Greg

[Theo Muusse]

035a - 045a, the final bird showm here is a 3rd winter alright, given the 3rd generation secondaries.

R Theo

[JanJ]

As Theo mentioned, 3rd generation secondaries, which would make it a type 4cy. However, a closer look at the secondaries reveals that only the inner sec. are more or less all grey, while the outer ones are more or less a mix of grey and brown. Small mirror on p10. A rather smart bird Greg!

Check some of Peter´s Herrings here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/Zorkyyy/3c ... erringGull#

JanJ

[Theo Muusse]

Yes, the 3rd winter/ 4cy herring shows nicely what differences can be seen within one generation of secs.
The earlier moulted outer secs are much more non-adult, perfectly matching the order of moult.

Theo

[grzegorzneubauer]

OK thx. Is this Peter's selection biased towards less typical 3rd winters (with pro-American characters)? Apparently the more western site makes a difference, but what we usually id as 3rd w here looks like the attached one. On average less black on tail, more adult-like coverts thus no contrast between inner prims and coverts. Anyway thanks for making me convinced that ona was a 3rd w. Greg

[adriaens]

Hi Greg,

yes, that link shows photos that are a bit biased. Perhaps Jan meant to post a link to ringed Herring Gulls:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Zorkyyy/3c ... lourRinged#
These are all known 3rd-cycle birds. In particular, check out blue CCAD and yellow 2V, which look more retarded still than your bird.