Birding Grand Haven today Sat. 01-26-2013 and found this gull. To me the brown eye suggests Thayer's Gull. I am not a gull person so comments are welcome.
Charlie DeWitt
3 comments:
Chace
said...
One thing to look at is the underside of the primaries. On a Thayer's they should be mostly white, on a Herring mostly black. You can see the underside of this bird's right wingtip, and it has a small white spot but it is mostly black. I would say Herring, but I've never seen a Thayer's!
Thayer's Gull also usually shows much larger white spots on upperside of the folded wing. Usually they'll have much heavier streaking going down the breast as well. The head and bill are too heavy for a typical THGU. I'm not sure what percentage of adult type HERG have dark eyes, but based on Berrien birds I would say it's at least 1%.
3 comments:
One thing to look at is the underside of the primaries. On a Thayer's they should be mostly white, on a Herring mostly black. You can see the underside of this bird's right wingtip, and it has a small white spot but it is mostly black. I would say Herring, but I've never seen a Thayer's!
Thayer's Gull also usually shows much larger white spots on upperside of the folded wing. Usually they'll have much heavier streaking going down the breast as well. The head and bill are too heavy for a typical THGU. I'm not sure what percentage of adult type HERG have dark eyes, but based on Berrien birds I would say it's at least 1%.
Thanks for the input.
Charlie DeWitt
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