www.gull-research.org

Hi,

does anyone have any photos of a European Herring Gull with tiny, isolated black spot(s) on the secondaries, as in this smithsonianus:
http://gull-research.org/smithsonianus/ ... br012.html

I cannot find anything similar in my collection of photos, so I am wondering if this is a diagnostic character...

Thanks,
Peter

Today, with terrible light and eventually a rain front passing over, I went to the beach to take some images of immature Herrings. Construction works at the beach, so many birds present (2500+ including several LBBG and caspians but especially loads of Scandinavian argentatus). Here some images...

And a few more. Sorry for the white balance...
The age in the captions is just a guess, I didn't photograph any ringed birds. Not all birds show ink spots on tertilas and/or secondaries, this is just a set of random photographed birds today...
Probably most interesting bird is 8084-8086?

Yeah, 84-86 shows a slightly worrying pattern on the secondaries.
But none of these birds show truly black 'ink spots' or 'piano keys' as typical smithsonianus.