Dark eyed YLG

[WolfgangSchweighofer]

Hello,

today I have discovered this interesting adult YLG at a power station (river Donau/Danube; gull´s roosting). It was already really dark but I tried some digiscopings - here are the poor results.
The bird was quite small, had rather dark eyes and a pretty short four-coloured bill - good features for armenicus
I could not really see the open wing, but it seemed that the bird had only small white primary tips. Maybe it has a small mirror on P9.

The question is: Should I hunt the bird again under better conditions in the following days





Wolfgang

[Cristian Mihai]

Hi,

I'm afraid that your gull is entirely (too) dark...

[WolfgangSchweighofer]

Hi,

I'm afraid that your gull is entirely (too) dark...

Not the gull, but the light...

The bird had definitely dark eyes, clear to see by sope. But meanwhile I have noted parts of a mirror on another pic, so I did not need to "hunt" the bird again.
The question is, how many YLG can have dark eyes? YLG is quite frequent here and I don´t see any dark-eyed birds like this one.

The last one with dark eyes was the following bird, seen in December 2005. Just some days before I had heard of an armenicus-claim in Vienna and so I have taken this one picture. At home I thought: Looks not bad with the dark brown eye, the very short 4-coloured bill and it´s amount of black on P5! Some gullers confirmed that, but I had no flightshot etc. In fact you need DNA.

Second question: Are there any armenicus-reports from western Black Sea? If not, I think we can forget this species in central Europe...

[lou bertalan]

not that i know of, wolfgang. but that doesn't mean anything since most birders from romania and bulgaria don't differentiate much the gulls from the argentatus-complex. even though plenty of birding tours of western europeans visit the danube delta, durankulak and burgas regions i've never heard of any armenicus claim. still the region is rel. poorly watched compared to central/western european country. just an example which springs to my mind - there is not even one definite record of richard's pipit for romania (!) where it should pass on a yearly basis, especially in the dobrogea along the black sea coast.

your first bird by the way looks quite armenicus-like with its common gull like round head and stubby bill. unfortunately you would need a series of much better pics to get close to a definite ID for an out-of-range armenian gull claim. a strong black subterminal band on bill is rel. common in adult winter michahellis, this is one of the more variable features so you would need wingtip pics. the p10 mirror seen in the pics looks slightly too large for a real armenicus and seems situated too close to the tip of the feather IMO.

dark eyed adult michahellis are rare but they are out there. personally i haven't seen one yet (and i have seen thousends) but i know at least 3 pics of such birds, e.g. this one: http://ic2.pbase.com/o6/09/645509/1/744 ... G_3982.jpg - not totally dark, but this one is (a 4cy though): http://www.mallorcaweb.net/gavines/IMAT ... r%2707.jpg

bill and head shape of the 2005 bird rather say "Mittelmeermöwe" to me.

armenian gull is a short distant migrant to the levant, basically israel, it is seen regularly on cyprus of course and on crete but there are pretty few records from mainland greece already, so it seems that the rel. small anatolian population is not prone to move westwards. - but: never say never, especially not in large gulls

[Jonas Landolt]

What do you think about this bird? First I thought it is a micha, but as I read here, that dark eyed michahellis are quiet rare, I'm not sure anymore... The photos were taken at the 19.2.09 at the Bodensee, Switzerland.

[lou bertalan]

hi jonas,

that's a caspian gull, steppenmöwe, although a weird one concerning the small p10 mirror, solid subterminal band (p10) and black down to even p3(?) and bright yellow bareparts. so this could indeed be a contender for an eastern caspian. it's a cachinnans because it has long white tongues/restricted black on the underside of primaries.
often such ind. are considered as "eastern" types (birds from caspian sea do have much black in wingtip) but i'd warn to define them as such since variation in black sea breeding birds (the so called 'ponticus' = the ones we are used to see in central/western europe) includes also birds with solid black p10 subterminal bands, rel. small p10 tongues and black down to at least p4.

all the best and Frohe Weihnachten!

lou

[Jonas Landolt]

Thank you lou.
Yeah that was also my second thougt, but the black tip on P10 irritated me. I didn't know that cachinnans can show such a tip on P10, well there is a lot to learn for me.

Good gulling
Jonas

[adriaens]

The larger than average amount of black in the primaries could also be just a sign that the bird is not fully adult yet.

[Ronald Klein]

The larger than average amount of black in the primaries could also be just a sign that the bird is not fully adult yet.

I don`t think so, because the leg-colour is bright yellow. This is untypical for cach, but possible in fully adults in spring.

[Ies Meulmeester]

The larger than average amount of black in the primaries could also be just a sign that the bird is not fully adult yet.

I don`t think so, because the leg-colour is bright yellow. This is untypical for cach, but possible in fully adults in spring.

Bright yellow legs are also possible in autumn, I wouldn't say that it's very untypical for cachinnans but rather scarce. Most bird we seen in SW Europe have grey/pinkish legs with sometimes yellowish tinge, but some individuals have bright yellow legs, as this one:

http://www.iesmeulmeester.nl/fotos.php? ... catsub=410

I think that bright yellow legs are more common than we sometimes think, especially on Caspian Gulls from more eastern-ward and on the breeding grounds/colonies. according to KMO who say that in colonies in Ukraine 12% have deep yellow legs and 88% pale or greyish yellow legs.

Ies