Subject: gulls indeed!
Date: Aug 1 13:43:51 1994
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


As Deborah Wisti-Peterson's message clearly indicated, this is a gull time
of year. Adults, many of them in pristine breeding plumage and many already
in autumn molt, fresh juveniles, and--as always--those other year classes
of many species are appearing in migration. This is the time of year of
incredible confusion in gull ID, as many first- and second-year birds are
in heavy molt and look almost rididulously ragged. Wing tips are faded and
worn, about the color now of the next-palest (or next-next-palest) species.

I spent a few hours at the Nome, Alaska, city dump (no better habitat to
visit if you're a gull enthusiast) in late July, and was probably more
confused than edified. Lots of immature gulls in all stages of molt,
primarily Glaucous but also many Siberian Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus
vegae, probably deserves species status) and a few Slaty-backed and
Glaucous-winged gulls. I couldn't tell the immatures apart of Slaty-backed
and Herring; there were at least 10 third-year and adult Slaty-backs, so I
assume there were plenty of younger birds. Parenthetically, Slaty-backs
were all over the place, much more common than I had thought they were
anywhere in Alaska. Adult Herrings varied from yellow-eyed to brown-eyed
(the majority). The mantle color of vegae is medium gray, at least as dark
as a California Gull and probably as dark as the palest northern Western
Gulls; I can't imagine that it would be easy to distinguish from a Western
Gull if one shows up here--perhaps by head pattern. They should show up, as
they are so common on the Seward Peninsula, and they coexist broadly with
Slaty-backs, which increasingly visit us. In Anchorage there were plenty of
"American" (smithsonianus) Herring Gulls, obviously much paler-mantled than
the ones at Nome.

With the Nome dump gulls were two first-year birds, one of which would have
been called a Thayer's Gull here in WA and the other would have had to be
called a Kumlien's Gull. What they really were is only a matter of
conjecture. There were odd birds that were surely Glaucous X
Glaucous-winged hybrids, probably some Glaucous X Herring hybrids, maybe
even Slaty-backed X Herring hybrids; whew! Maybe we should consider
ourself fortunate that *our* gulls are relatively easy.

As this is a forum for sharing, I'll add one more thing. I finally saw my
long-wished-for Ivory Gulls, in the ice pack north of Uelen, Siberia, last
month. They came in right next to our ship, which was adjacent to a small
ice floe. Oh yes, the reason they were there is because a polar bear was
killing an adult walrus on the floe--less than 100 feet from the ship. As
this was happening, Glaucous Gulls started drifting in, to perch on neaby
ice, and finally the Ivory Gulls came, one at a time--11 of them. It was
cosmic.....

Dennis Paulson