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hello

good news from southern romanian plains, a small cachinnans colony has been discovered by joszef szabo and ciprian fantana at one of the olt-river reservoirs. this is now the westernmost known breeding site of caspian gull in the country. it's on a small well vegetated island on a large reservoir lake near arcesti (on such lakes further north in transilvania michahellis is breeding in a few pairs!).
some of you might know that one of the aims of my extensive collecting of large gulls data and images from romania is to seak for possible hybrids mich x cach, by studying variation in both species and of course by looking for mixed pairs. the documentary photos made by joszef unfortunately are not good enough to clinch one of these birds as a mich i'm afraid. it could be either a 4cy cach (not so probable in my eyes), or a pure mich or a hybrid itself. primary pattern looks better for michahellis. what do you think???
strangely, in some of the previous photos the same potential nest is occupied by a pair of cachinnans, later pics showing this other bird with michahellis characters long-calling.
have a look and tell me your opinions about this bird please! note texts under the photos.



lou

It is sure cachinnans, because their "albatrossing" is a diacnostic feature. For my experience the importance of wingtip-pattern often will be overestimated. May be it is a bird in 4th or 5th year.

thanks ronald,

the "albatrossing" pose was my main concern too. still, even though there is some variation in the shape of p10 tongue (ventral) and its demarcation line to the black part, in the vast majority of cases this demarcation line is more or less straight and forms a rectangle to the outer part of black, like here, a 4cy type from the end of april: http://lou.bertalan.de/gulls/m_phi.php? ... nuary-june - this has a very similar pattern (no p9 mirror) and p10 tongue is similar in length but as mentioned, there is this rectangle at the inner end of the tongue. michahellis on the other hand usually show a rounded tongue - hope that makes sense and explains my thoughts.