Greetings All

Well, here I am, someone whom has not seen the bird offering yet another
opinion.

1) I'd be most interested in knowing how the nominate Iceland Gulls collected
in the middle of the US were ID'd. Errors in specimens are far from unknown,
and I'd love to know what criteria for ID were used. The problem is, we don't
know if birds breeding within the range of Kumlein's always have dark on the
wingtips (as this area is so inaccessible). A rather large percentage of ICGU's
that I saw growing up in Chicago lacked dark primary tips. I find it hard to
believe they were all nominate birds. Personally, I think some Kumlein's lack
dark on wingtips, and thus the Kent bird (if it were an ICGU, see below) could
be a Kumlein's rather than nominate.

2) I find it hard to buy the Kent bird as an ICGU. The bill looks too thick,
apologies to Gene who measure ratios and has seen the bird in the wild. The
eyering color is not reliable (Doug Schonewald sent me photos of an e. WA
Glaucous with reddish eyering and Sibley mentions it as a GLGU variant). The bird
looks too big and too stocky in the vast majority of photos I've seen. I've
received some comments from skilled birders outside the Pac NW who expressed doubt
about this bird being an ICGU before we started discussing such on Tweeters.
It does look atypical for a Glaucous Gull, but an atypical Glaucous Gull is
far more likely than an atypical Iceland Gull. If we were living in a place
where Glaucous Gull was much rarer than Iceland Gull, I'd probably not "buy" this
bird as a Glaucous either, but would leave it as "unidentified", which is
sometimes the best course.

Just my opinion. Could be wrong.

Cheers
Steven Mlodinow
Everett WA