Maureen asked:

...

>There were additional gull species to our almost exclusively
>glaucous-winged semi-domestic residents. Several of the medium-sized
>juvenile gulls had decidedly pink (not fleshy-colored, but PINK)-bills
>with black tips and also PINK legs. These were generally over-all light
>appearing very light silvery-grey mantles/ whitish heads and moderate
>brown scalloping on the body and very long-tipped (extended far beyond
>tail) dark brown to brownish-black wings plus dark eyes. They were
>intermediate in size to the accompanying larger glaucous-winged gulls.
>There were also Mew, California and Ring-billed gulls. The Nat. Geo.
>Guide was not as much help as Peterson's Western Guide. He stated that
>there are seven species of gulls with pink bills and pink legs during the
>2nd year. The bills were larger and not quite as refined as the Mew
>gulls, and the birds were closer in size to the different year-closeby CA
>gulls with grayblue-green legs. Are these pink-billed/pink legged >ones
2nd-year CA gulls or a hybrid of some kind? Can somebody >help, please?

Sounds like a young California Gull to me, Maureen. In any age-class, they
are always "tail-draggers", i.e., they have long wings which extend way
down the tail and often it appears that they just don't want to hold them
up all that high, so they almost drag on the ground at times. The
bicolored bill is typical of a 2nd-year California, too.

- Jack

Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca