I have placed 6 photographs that I took on March 17 of the dark-mantled gull
being seen at City Beach, Sandpoint, Bonner Co., N Idaho at:

http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/inland-nw-birders/1st .

This gull was first reported by Lisa Hardy last week. These photos are not
great, but they do show enough detail of certain important areas (nape & eye
smudging, leg color, wing tip pattern of folded and extended wings, upper &
underwing color, tail band). They do not show the orbital ring which is
orange.

There has been conjecture as to the identification of this gull: Western
vs. Glaucous-winged X Western vs. Slaty-backed. Below I have included
the comments of Ray Korpi concerning dark-mantled hybrids. We would
appreciate a discussion of this bird's identification.

Stephen Lindsay
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
slindsay at dmi.net


----- Original Message -----
From: "Korpi, Ray" <RKorpi at clark.edu>
To: <slindsay at dmi.net>
Sent: Wednesday, 20 March, 2002 2:39 PM
Subject: Dark-mantled Gull


> Stephen,
> The one thing that I've learned from local gull experts about Western X
> Glaucous-winged hybrids is that there are dark birds. I have seen, on
> occasion, very dark individuals that were for all intents and purposes
like
> Western Gulls except that the underside of the black wing tips was grey
> rather than black. Skip Russell, who has done much gull work in Portland
> (and worked on Dunn's gull tape), states that pure Westerns are very rare
in
> Portland, and in much of his experience, birds reported as Westerns are
> darker hybrids. So, yes, there are dark hybrids, and they do stick out
like
> your bird there. Someone should check the underside of the wingtips if
> possible
> RK
>
> Ray Korpi, PhD
> Director, Hawkins Computer Lab
> Clark College
> Vancouver WA
>
>
>