>From Cameron Cox:

Tweeters,

Yesterday, Feb 7th, I hit several good gull areas in the south Sound. Along
with the standard fare I had a first-cycle Glaucous Gull and a gorgeous
first-cycle Glaucous X Herring Gull hybrid (see below for a description).
Both of these birds were seen in the afternoon at Gene Coulon Park in
Renton, swimming in front of the log boom. Charlie Wright had told me that
this location was hosting a large number of Glaucous-winged X Herring
hybrids and this was certainly true yesterday. Birds showing the
characteristics of this hybrid combination made up a minimum of 10% of the
total 1500-2000 gulls. Also present were large numbers of the ghostly pale
northern Glaucous-winged Gulls which easily outnumbered birds showing the
characteristics of more southerly breeders.

Prior to Renton, I had visited the Tukwila gull area and Gog-le-hi-ti in
Tacoma. Both of these areas where loaded with gulls though I didn't see
anything unusual. Northern type Glaucous-winged were present in numbers at
both of these locations as well. The other theme of the day was the high
numbers of older immature Thayer's Gulls compared to juvenile/first-cycle
birds. I had only 4 first-cycle/first year Thayer's compared to 20-25
second-cycle birds and 6-10 third-cycle. The overall numbers of Thayer's
Gulls where ~100 at Tukwila and a very conservative 350 at Gog.

The numbers of northern Glaucous-winged and Glaucous-winged X Herring
hybrids suggests to me that there are a large number of gulls from Alaska in
our region right now. This could be an excellent time to turn up an Asian
bird like Slaty-backed or perhaps even another Black-tailed Gull! Good
luck!

Glaucous X Herring Gull hybrid
In plumage the hybrid looked very much like a Glaucous being almost white
overall with fine coffee-with-cream colored vermiculations on the
wing-coverts and tertails. The bill was patterned as Glaucous but with a
bit of dark smudging on the basal two-thirdsl. The bill was a bit dainty
for Glaucous and the bird had Herring like head structure and slate-gray
folded primaries.

Cameron Cox
Seattle, WA
Cameron_cox at hotmail.com