at Richmond Bank, Cheshire
Delighted to get an email from Ian McKerchar. It’s immediately apparent that his photos of a juvenile Lesser Black-backed type Gull are ‘of the type’. The hypothetical Baltic Gull type. Just like 2+ birds at Flamborough in Sept. Just like several from North Norfolk recorded by ardent gull watchers in August/ Sept over several years.
Hi Martin,
I took these photos on August 15th this year at Richmond Bank, Cheshire and to say the bird stood out like a sore thumb was something of an understatement. Given that all the many hundreds of juvenile Lesser Black-backed Gulls present at the time were typically considerably darker than this bird you can see why. It’s head and underparts were strikingly pale and the upperparts had a frankly beautiful, almost scalloped look to them with the feather edges much paler than anything else around it. It was typically long winged but small billed and had something of a greyer ‘shawl’ around the neck. I couldn’t place it at the time and initial thoughts ranged from juvenile Caspian Gull (which is fairly obviously wasn’t!) to fuscus Lesser Black-backed Gull. When the bird finally flew though it displayed strikingly white underwing coverts which really threw me as I didn’t realise juvenile fuscus apparently displayed such and I expected the usual Lesser Black-backed Gull brown coverts. I’ve seen many hundreds of fuscus over the years but never a juvenile so after some fairly rudimentary investigation, including your recent thoughts on the subject, it seems white coverts may be something of a feature of juvenile fuscus?
All the very best, Ian
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Ian McKerchar
County Bird Recorder, Greater Manchester
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and king gull: Chris Gibbins commented on Ian’s photos:
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The characters combined as shown by the Ian´s gull looks promising for Baltic, and if I saw this one in my home patch (south-east Sweden, like at Ottenby, I wouldn´t be to much bothered by any thoughts on – say intermedius. However, when – in this case – in Britain, I would still prefer to see it ringed, to be on the safe side, if there are any safe sides nowadays with all that spreading of sp/ssp 🙂
When it comes to primary projection on the subject gull it looks to be on the short end, however one should not put to much conclusions in to that I guess
A few Baltic from Stockholm by Alan Dalton:
https://plus.google.com/photos/102549840750973383293/albums?banner=pwa&gpsrc=pwrd1#photos/102549840750973383293/albums/5518246766228098705
Jan