www.gull-research.org

hi,

on first sight this looks like a dark, somewhat retarded male 3rd cycle cachinnans. but since there exist 2nd cycle caspians with quite adult like inner primaries (greyish, rel. large white tip) on 2nd look i thought this to be a 2cy - judging the primary pattern - no mirrors...
there might be a tiny pale mirror in the small growing p10, but not larger than the smallest mirrors in a 2cy. actually if i enlarge p10 in the original i only get a slightly paler area where the mirror should be.
but this bird seems to be a 3rd cycle. bill is a 3rd cycle basic type (with some red in gonys); inner two primaries with no dark marks and large white tips. but then p3 shows a dark mark, p4 has a bold one (usually not even close that large in 3rd cycle caspians), no mirror and no tongue in p9, no mirror in p10!! this is the 3cy individual with the largest amount of black and least amount of white i have ever encountered. we don't know if it is a pure cachinanns but structurally it fits a normal male caspian.

lou

Hi Lou,
Interesting bird, and not the only cachinnans that may look retarded. One month ago I received a DVD from German ornithologist Armin Deutsch, a collection of photo's of ringed cachinnans photographed at Deponie Pohlsche Heide. Of course I was very happy to get the DVD and excited what to find between all these ringed birds. One bird was striking in retarded plumage, and it appeared to be from Ukraine! See: http://gull-research.org/cachinnans/2cy/l010265.html

You have to scroll down to get to 3rd cycle (4CY February) to find the pictures I copy here as attachment. The resting bird might well have gone into the books as pale-eyed 3CY February; its the inner primary pattern up to P5 that does the work here. Note that tail pattern and black on secondaries fro cachinnans!

(( Like to say a big Thank You again to Armin for taking all these pictures, just great work!!!!!! ))

Mars

hi mars,

that's really interesting, either the retarded 2nd cycle and the 3rd cycle with pale eyes: i really wonder in such birds if this is within pure cachinnans variation. but it seems so.

best whishes for 2014,

lou

Hi Lou,

Best wishes for 2014 to you and your family!

Interesting indeed, these birds. The Kreminchuk Reservoir, Cherkassy Oblast is far away (too far?) from the known contact zones in Poland or in Belarus. There are two option:
- we may assume cachinnans show more variation than we suspected so far,
- in some way (ancient?) contacts lead argentatus genes have spread into these cachinnans colonies.

These two option may also be true simultaneously. Still, if you look at the pictures by Chris from Azerbaijan, they show a bewildering variation in both jizz and plumage. Simple logic and reasoning tell us they should have hatched in the Russian interior 'somewhere', but after all may still best regarded 'cachinnans'. And in fact that's exactly what the Russian ornithologists do for decades!

Attached a ringed cachinnans from the same colony, ringed the same day, and of course photographed by that same excellent photographer just a month earlier (so a standard 3rd cycle)! Thanks Armin.

hi mars & others, again,

having encountered quite many odd cachinnans in romania (mostly during breeding season or shortly after), especially such that seemed "too dark" as 1st and 2nd cycles, too retarded in 2nd and 3rd cycles (mirrors), too checkered on GC in 1st cycle (even in pure cachinnans breeding colonies), too little black on p5 in adults (with the extreme having no mark), too short tongues and small mirrors (adults) and so on, i thought long since that our western european criteria for cachinnans exclude too much of its natural variation. nowadays we are a step further. still, even chris gibbins' and brian small's excellent papers suggesting the scoring criteria for pure and hybridish cachis in some respects seem too severe. as for the 2nd suggestion, i also think that tatus genes influence phenotypes in core cachinnans populations. not necessarily in the past, i suppose this is more likely to happen more and more in the present with the expansion of caspian gull towards north, with many hybrids from the (rel. new?) contact zone breeding after that in more southern colonies (black sea). same might happen with birds with barabensis and heuglini genes around the caspian sea.

one example: last winter there have been seen and photogr. some adult gulls in romania with an "impossible" feature combination: head striation and structure suggested argentatus but in some of these long dorsal tongues AND a solid p5 mark were visible, a combination that as far as i know at least peter adriaens comments as not being good for pure tatus (if long tongues in tatus, black is reduced like in the northern birds), but what should i do with heavily streaked heads, long tongues and much black in p5? are these all hybrids? how far east (beyond lake ladoga) do "real" herring gulls breed? how far south?

att. some of the mentioned 'argentatus':
1. and 2. a bird with strong gonys, longish underwing p10 tongue and solid p5 mark (black sea coast, 13.01.2013, seb. bugariu) 3. record shots of an adult bird from olt reservoir arcesti (inner southern romania), january 2013 with the combination of strong head streaking, tatus structure, solid p5 band and long dorsal tongues on p9 and p10. 4. another tatus (?) from 2.02.2013, also with solid p5 mark. - and this: http://www.lou.bertalan.de/gulls/m_phi. ... jul-dec%29
- caspian like head but much black and assymetrical "moons" or mirrors(?) on p8 - also possibly stemming from the russian melting pot (cristian mihai, 15.12. 2012, bucarest): https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 7144_n.jpg

cheers,

lou

lou bertalan wrote: one example: last winter there have been seen and photogr. some adult gulls in romania with an "impossible" feature combination: head striation and structure suggested argentatus but in some of these long dorsal tongues AND a solid p5 mark were visible, a combination that as far as i know at least peter adriaens comments as not being good for pure tatus (if long tongues in tatus, black is reduced like in the northern birds),

Hi Lou,
I do not think that my comments have ever been that black and white...
Rather, back in 2004 (in Dutch Birding 26:3) I wrote:

"In European forms, a long tongue on p10 *usually* excludes a complete black band on p5; (however), some intergrades argenteus > < argentatus, a few Eastern Baltic Herring Gulls, and a few hybrids argentatus x Pontic Gull do combine this tongue with a complete black band on p5".

I would therefore certainly not consider this combination as 'impossible', especially not in eastern argentatus!
See also http://gull-research.org/smithsonianus/5cyjune.html

adriaens wrote:

lou bertalan wrote: one example: last winter there have been seen and photogr. some adult gulls in romania with an "impossible" feature combination: head striation and structure suggested argentatus but in some of these long dorsal tongues AND a solid p5 mark were visible, a combination that as far as i know at least peter adriaens comments as not being good for pure tatus (if long tongues in tatus, black is reduced like in the northern birds),

Hi Lou,
I do not think that my comments have ever been that black and white...
Rather, back in 2004 (in Dutch Birding 26:3) I wrote:

"In European forms, a long tongue on p10 *usually* excludes a complete black band on p5; (however), some intergrades argenteus > < argentatus, a few Eastern Baltic Herring Gulls, and a few hybrids argentatus x Pontic Gull do combine this tongue with a complete black band on p5".

I would therefore certainly not consider this combination as 'impossible', especially not in eastern argentatus!
See also http://gull-research.org/smithsonianus/5cyjune.html

hi peter,

i think that's the point with the eastern influence - even in finnish or gotland argentatus there is a certain, not too large percentage of adults with solid p5 mark but i didn't know if they can have long tongues also. there was a more recent statement of yours somewhere, i think in this forum, that let me citing you on this topic (and of surely i give a lot of weight to your statements). by the way: what do you make of gregs birds from ivanovo labelled as argentatus with black daown to p4??? certainly these should be hybrids?

lou

lou bertalan wrote: by the way: what do you make of gregs birds from ivanovo labelled as argentatus with black daown to p4??? certainly these should be hybrids?
lou

Do you have a direct link?

it's from the flickr-set from ivanovo oblast: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neubauerg/ ... 987322384/

right the 2nd pic is labelled as herring gull (with a disturbing primary pattern): http://www.flickr.com/photos/neubauerg/ ... 8508214870

while this one which looks better for tatus is labelled as "LA-like": http://www.flickr.com/photos/neubauerg/ ... 508214870/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neubauerg/ ... 508214870/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/neubauerg/ ... 508214870/ have solid p5 marks but they seem to have little extension of primary tongues, dorsally. maybe hidden.

especially the first bird (2nd in the set) breaks with everything we connect with herring gull in western and central europe...

I must be missing something, as I do not see any problems with the bird on the 2nd pic of the set?
Why would black down to P4 be that impossible for Herring Gull?

Here is a colour-ringed bird from Belgium with pattern on P4. It was 6 years old when I photographed it:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-V1Qo ... 12_002.JPG

Another one, 5 years old when photographed:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_05M ... 06_004.JPG

And one more. Almost 9 years old when photographed, but it still showed quite extensive black in the tail!
One year later, it still showed the black spot on P4, but the next winter the spot had disappeared. The black tail markings were still there though!

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LrUI ... 10_006.JPG

At the time of the Dutch Birding paper, we found a black spot on P4 in about 2% of argenteus and also 2% of argentatus.
One eastern argentatus even had a complete black band on P4.
Barth (1968) found 3 birds out of 200 in Norway with black spot on P4.
I would expect it to be most common in eastern argentatus (as those populations tend to have black further inward on the wing on average than in other Herring Gulls),
so Greg's birds that are labelled 'Herring Gull' certainly do not look unusual to me - except that the following bird looks more like a Caspian Gull to me:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neubauerg/ ... 508214870/.

The "baraba types" are a whole other matter though...