ML274273231

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

On the flats loosely associating with skimmers and laughing gulls. First noticed an adultish herring like gull with a heavily streaked head that came down to its uppersides. I also noticed the slimmer bill and from a distance a black tip. These features caught my eye so I mentioned to all the other surveyors to look more closely at the bird. At this point I started suspecting we had a California gull but we could only see the front side as it was facing us. Clay Taylor, Richard Gibbons, Chris Bick and I decided to walk a little closer and get a different angle. At that point it was clear the bird was larger than the laughing gulls but not particularly large. We were then able to see it had a dark eye and a slight smudge of red on its black tipped bill. The legs were a dull green. Mantle was dark, only a tad lighter than the laughing gull mantles. The wingtips were long, pointy and black with three to four white tips visible. Altogether these features rule out herring. Ring-billed eliminated by eye color but also on this age of a bird, the streaking would be finer and more confined to the nape and not down to the sides. The gull is probably a third cycle bird or near-adult.

Technical information

Model

E-M1MarkII

Lens

OLYMPUS M.100-400mm F5.0-6.3

ISO

200

Focal length

400 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/250 sec

Dimensions

369 pixels x 249 pixels

Original file size

31.06 KB