www.gull-research.org

Something a little different. I have been looking through old photos the past few nights with a view to posting a few on this forum. I seen this one and on closer inspection it appears to have very feint grey markings on the outer primaries. If these are real this is indicitive of Kumlieni influence. I didn't notice this at the time as i was concentrateing taking the perfect adult Iceland Gull photograph!

derek

I was told at the IGM this spring in Scotland that the faintest of grey is enough to pinpoint kumliens.
Sometimes you can only see it in hand!

Theo

Have I missed something? With such primaries clearly paler than the primary coverts, this looks like a perfectly normal Iceland Gull, I would think ?

Derek and Theo would of course mean the wingtip and not the upper part of the outer primaries where Derek has his two marks, if now anybody got that wrong However, a closer look doe´s show that the grey on p9 & 8 seem to continue down to and almost reach the very tips of those primaries, and that would of course be Derek and Theos point. In that case one could perhaps consider kumlieni since glaucoides have all white primary tips. According to Howell & Dunn a kumlieni with a pattern like the one here would represent a stage 0 bird and then very similar to a glaucoides, which also would mean whitish primarytips. If Dereks bird has grey on p9 & 8 reaching the tips or close to the tips - I for one couldn´t explain this. Í would agree with Peter on the contrast between p- coverts and outer primaries, but can we trust and judge this correctly from this one image?

Some of Derek´s fine kumlieni and glaucoides here:

http://www.pbase.com/derekcharles/iclan ... r&page=all

http://www.pbase.com/derekcharles/kumli ... t&page=all

JanJ