Greetings

First of all, Yellow-footed Gull was quite mistakenly considered a subspecies
of Western Gull in the past. It is phenotypically and genotypically more
distinct from Western than Western and GW are from each other. Additionally, it
would be exceedingly odd for a WEGU x YFGU to wander north and hybridize with
either GW or Herring Gull (actually, as far as I know, no hybrids between these
WEGU and YFGU has yet been recorded).

As I said before, gulls showing up with the "wrong" leg color is known to
happen: in other words, birds that do not appear to be hybrids in any other way
but have the wrong leg color. Howell demonstrated this in WEGUs in spring in
central CA (WEGUs in high breeding showing bright yellow legs).

Finally, I still see nothing in the description that convinces me this was
not a large sub-adult Cal Gull of the albertaensis race with unusually bright
legs. It is a shame that no one pursued it or photographed it, but odd gulls are
extremely difficult to ID from photos, and nearly impossible to do so from
written descriptions.

By the way, heuglini is an Asiatic gull variously considered a race of
Yellow-legged Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, or its own thing (if I remember
correctly-- hard to keep up with the rapidly changing taxonomic considerations in
gulls).

Cheers
Steven Mlodinow
Everett WA


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