Alvaro,

I've been using the eye color feature to distinguish 1st winter Glaucous
Gulls (dark eyes) from 2nd winter birds (light eye), though I suspect
this may not always work. By that standard we get mostly 1st winter
birds, even some very pale birds others have labeled 2nd winter on the
assumption that they were too pale. Is this what the rest of you'all think?

Gene Hunn.

On Fri, 20 Jan 1995, Alvaro Patricio Jaramillo wrote:

>
> 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
>
>
>