When I went out shooting
Plan B last week, three gulls caught my eye. The front gull I recognized, the gull to the left looked familiar but the gull to the right seemed odd. What are they?
Now that I have a rainy day to put this post together, it is time to take a look at what we have here. So that all my research is not wasted and maybe I can encourage others to become brave and learn to identify gulls, I'll put my reputation on the line for the whole world to see.
When I was learning how to bird in my twenties, I had a birding buddy named Peter from Pasadena, CA. Two things I remember Peter saying, "Don't trust any air you can't see" (it's a Pasadena thing) and "I'm going to put off learning how to identify gulls in my
dotage." Living and birding in California and Colorado, strange gulls were more of a pain in the ass and I wouldn't fool anything but breading adults.
Adult Herring Gull
Adult Great Black-backed Gull
Well, the years go by and as I approach my dotage, I find myself living on the ocean without the comfort of songbirds flocking to my feeders giving me reassurance that I am a master birder because I can distinguish a Pygmy Nuthatch from a Pine Siskin. No, nature doesn't take kindly to fools and now I find myself surrounded by thousands of gulls. This gives me the opportunity to grow in character.
Gulls are bothersome in the fact that there are two year and four year gulls, meaning that they mature in two years and four years receptively. Two of our four year gulls here on Cape Ann are the Herring Gull and the Great Black-backed gull. The Herring gulls are found throughout the northern hemisphere and the Great Black-backed gull is found on the East Coast and along the Northern Atlantic coast along and in Western Europe, in Iceland, Greenland, and Northern Africa. So I suspect that the intimidation of gull identification is a international problem.
So either I will help solve a common problem or create an international incident. Since I'm not afraid to create big effects, here I go.
First up is a recently fledged Herring gull. Note the brown plumage, the pink and black bill and pay attention to the face and patterns on the back. As the season progresses, the bill will turn all black as shown in the first picture above.
Fledged Herring Gull
This is one gull that wasn't found in any of my field guides. This is fledgling Great Black-backed gull that was shot in August. It has a lighter face pattern and an all black bill.
Fledgling Great Black-backed gull
Next we have a second winter Great Black-backed gull. The face is much whiter and the back is more checkered than the Herring. The easy field mark is the white face. The back in this gull is turning black, but they can still be on the brown side.
Second Winter Great Black-backed Gull
Next is the second winter Herring Gull. We still have the brown finely checkered wings, but the bill is now pied pink and black. There is a hint of grey in the showing on the back.
Second winter Herring Gull
As the Great Black-backed gull matures, he becomes grayer in his third year. Note that the bill is black and has a gray tip.
Third year Great Black-backed Gull
The third winter Herring Gull looks like this. The bill is turning yellow and still has a deal of black in it. The back becomes gray but he still has much of the brown secondary feathers. His head is streaked.
Third Winter Herring Gull
As the Herring Gull matures, he develops the characteristic Herring Gull look. This is a non-breading adult.
Non-breading adult Herring Gull
And then you can get something in between. I suspect that this bird is coming into his adult plumage because I shot him in April. I throw this in not to put you in apathy, but to warn you, the field guides will not show you this stage and you must be prepared to do some thinking on your feet.
Herring Gull coming into adult plumage
Finally, your field guides will talk about bill spots. (This is the same bird as the previous photo.)
Herring Gull
Below are three mature Great Black-backed Gulls. Note that the bill patterns are all different. Your filed guides cannot possibly put in all the variations. Once again, just be prepared to think on your feet.
Great Black-backed Gulls
Great Black-backed Gulls
Great Black-backed Gulls
With all that said, you are now armed with all the data you need to identify the three birds in the first photo.
Easy-Peasy.
So don’t be afraid to get out there and look at those gulls. Get to know the gulls in your area. And if something blows in from out of town like this Glaucous Gull. You will be able to quickly realize it isn’t one of the locals. You can
shoot first and ask questions later.
And if you think one field guide is going to just hand you an answer, you are sadly mistaken. For this post, I used National Geographic’s
Filed Guide to Birds of North America,
The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, and Peter Harrison’s
Seabirds, an Identification Guide. Oh, and then I pulled out a 25 year old copy of Peterson's East Coast.
P.S. I spent about five hours putting this post together, yes five freaking hours! After that I was going down through my blog roll and over on
Kim's blog she pointed a blog dedicated to gulls which lead me to another one. Looking at them, I realized that they are a wonderful resource so I set up a new blog roll to the right, "Strictly for the Gulls".
