Subject: more gull questions
Date: Jan 20 11:04:33 1995
From: Alvaro Patricio Jaramillo - jaramill at sfu.ca



I will take Neil Ferguson's encouragement to keep going with the
gull thread, so here I go.
Since I moved over here to Vancouver I have had the pleasure of seeing
4 or 5 Glaucous gulls. All of these birds were close to being white, but
all of the ones that I saw well were first winter birds. Usually these
very pale birds are reported as second winter birds, probably because
Peterson illustrates second winter birds as being white. All of the
local birders that I asked about this mentioned that almost always
wintering Glaucous Gulls are in this white plumage.
Back in Ontario, where I used to live, Glaucous Gulls were more common
than they are here and we did not see this high a number of white birds.
First winter birds back east come in two main types: creamy brown birds with
a lot of barring as well as very pale birds that quickly wear to a largely
white plumage.
As I understand it, birds here should be of the Alaskan _barrovianus_
subspecies which are supposed to be smaller than other Glaucous Gulls.
Now my question is are they also much paler as immatures than eastern
birds? What do most of the Glaucous Gulls observed in Washington look
like? Are they also whitish, or do darker birds appear every so often.
Is my impression that western Glaucous Gulls are paler just a 'sampling
error' or is this real?

Al Jaramillo
jaramill at sfu.ca