Tweets,

Re. light-eyes on Thayer's. It depends on what one means by "light"
perhaps. My impression of ("typical"?) Herring Gull adults is that their
irises are almost white, color of white gold perhaps, really glaring,
while the ground color of Thayer's, and the dominant color when the brown
flecking is minimal is more a rich yellow. Do others agree?

Gene Hunn

On Fri, 6 Jan 1995, Michael Smith wrote:

> On Thu, 5 Jan 1995 STEPNIEWSKI at delphi.com wrote:
>
> > bill structure, brighter pink legs. The eye wasn't right for the majority
> > of Thayer's according to Grant, but he clearly notes there are exceptions
>
> Chris Hill and I saw an adult Thayer's-looking gull in Tacoma, which had
> very light eyes, too. So there do seem to be exceptions to that rule.
> The eyes appeared to be yellow, but we were too far away to see if they
> had small brown 'specks' or not.
>
> ____________________________
> Mike Smith
> Univ. of Washington, Seattle
> whimbrel at u.washington.edu
>
>