I have a question about the diagnostically-unique? colored orbital ring
mentioned for Herring Gulls (see below). Amongst the Des Moines Marina
gulls, there are a few with darker mantles, not-so-lemon-more light
brownish eyes, reddish orbital rings, generally large size, and the usual
deep black or dark sooty black wing tips. These do not have the
"fierce" expression that I associate (is this a valid field mark,
anyway?) with the type-cast Herring gull. Are these actually a subspecies
of Herring gull or possibly Glaucous-winged X Herring hybrids?
Continually struggling with ID'ing some of these gulls,

Maureen Ellis me2 at u.washington.edu Univ of WA and Des Moines, WA

Also, Michael, enjoyed your commentary about the "Enough is enough"
thread!
****************Part of Michael's post below************************
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 22:09:15 -0800
From: Michael Price <mprice at mindlink.bc.ca>
Reply-To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Enough is enough

Hi Tweets:

Oh. Birds. Yeah. Yesterday, a large, darker-than-usual mantled adult Herring
Gull, all the other pale grey, maybe a 'vegae' type (and, no, not a
Slaty-backed, though I tried *real* hard... it had the lemon-yellow eye with
reddish-orange orbital ring, large-mirror, small-mirror wingtip, the mantle
grey was a titch darker than a California Gull, or about mid-range in the
'Olympic Gull' grey-density continuum), was perched on a piling on the
Fraser River in New Westminster about 100 meters E of--and I'm not making
this up--the 'Echo'-class Russian submarine that's moored at New Westminster
Quay at the foot of Eighth Street, and open for public tours for those
interested in, among other things, testing their theory that a rusty ol'
dawg like this could seriously have taken on the US or NATO navies with the
slightest realistic hope of success.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net