www.gull-research.org

Hi everyone.

I had a trip to Azerbaijan in September, watching gulls. I have lots of images and at the moment little time to work though them systematically (perhaps a job for the winter). I thought that in the meantime I would post a selection of 90 1 cy birds to share with you all. I hope you find them interesting. They are at

http://chrisgibbins-gullsbirds.blogspot.com/

Note sure how/why, but every bird is facing to the right

Chris

HI Chris.

Let me be the first to comment and marvle over your exellent contribution from this area. Very interesting (and in part confusing ) pic indeed! As you say, the ones in the end would not be cachinnans - more in line with heuglini (LBBG) features. Many though - looks supreme cachinnans. Are we at all to look for barabensis among these?

Cheers

JanJ

Hi Jan et al.

Sorry, yes, perhaps I should of said. Amongst the adult and older immature gulls were heuglini and barabensis. As you know, criteria for 1 cy barabensis at this time of year still need some work and so, at least for me, those birds in the sample that are not classic cachinnans may be this taxon. But I'm not sure...there is a lot of variability in these birds and it is rather continuous, so no obvious dividing lines. I will try to post flight shots asap as these help....lots of Caspian like birds had dark inner primaries.

I was really just trying to make these shots available on ORG for folks to look at, rather than waiting until I was a little more sure about what they are before posting. In truth I was dazed and confused by many many birds so probably I will never be sure: it was quite a salutory lesson to be confronted with large flocks of birds and only being sure about a handful of them.

Chris

Chris,
I realise of course that the still not solved (if ever to be ) identification criteria for - in this case - 1 cy birds is subject to more or less speculations.
Nevetheless, good to show these anyway of course!

Jan

Hi Jan et al.

As you say, there is uncertainty inherent in the IDs; so it is nice simply to think that people find the pics an interesting and useful reference resource from this part of the world.

It would be great to show some of these and other birds from the trip at the Zagreb IGM if time permits, and discuss them over a few beers.

Chris

Chris Gibbins wrote:Hi Jan et al.

As you say, there is uncertainty inherent in the IDs; so it is nice simply to think that people find the pics an interesting and useful reference resource from this part of the world.

It would be great to show some of these and other birds from the trip at the Zagreb IGM if time permits, and discuss them over a few beers.

Chris

Such a good idea - if only I could go there this time....

Jan

Any changes of fuscus at the end?
Looks good.

Nice pix again Chris!

Hi Theo,

Yes, you could very well be correct about the frosty bird being fuscus. Both jizz and plumage look good, and of course the jizz is probably better for this taxon than heuglini. One problem was establishing what might be passing through Azerbaijan in Sept (virtually nothing known about gulls there). I imagine that fuscus should pass through regularly en-route to the Middle-east. Based on ads, heuglini was rather abundant, whereas I only saw 1 adult fuscus.

DSLR photography there was difficult. I spent around 8 days at one particular site where there was a flock of 2000 or so gulls. It was on a beach but they were difficult to approach, even in my car. I spent many frustrating hours trying to approach the flock. Only on one afternoon (and even then only for a couple of hours) did I manage to get close enough for reasonable pics, and so over the short time that i was near to the flock I rattled off as many pics as I could. I was keen to get shots of as many birds as Icould and so had little time to follow individuals to get pics of underwing, upperwing and tails, especially as the birds very very nervous and spooked easily. So I just moved through the flock getting pics of standing individuals. This is my (not very good) excuse for only have these standing pics of these non-Caspian types

Its a brilliant place for gulls and no problem to watch them in a telescope or take digiscope photos, but tricky for me and my 400 mm lens.

(As an aside, the reason every single casp is facing right in the pictures is that they were all on same afternoon, facing into wind and I took pics of each bird in turn as I drove along behind the flock!)

Chris

my comment is on chris' blog http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID ... 1710734821

i also have started with a written list of my personal tentative IDs together with a few feature combos (half way now).

lou

As Theo hinted, the last ones might very well be Baltic, which was in my mind as well initially. However, the question is, are there any known useful criterias for separating 1cy nom. fuscus from ssp heuglini?
JanJ