gulbeinet måke

Iceland Gull in July

Against all odds a Iceland Gull showed up at Langvannet today. The bird was a 3cy, and probably a male since it was large and heavily built. If anything I was aiming for a Yellow-legged or Caspian...

2. summer Iceland Gull

2. summer Iceland Gull

One bird got my pulse up. A Herring-like gull with heavy bill and bright yellow legs. Also head and wing looks quite good for Yellow-legged. Still I don't have the experience to nail a mich... Sadly the bird only was seen a few minutes. It gained altitude and disappeared towards north.

Looks good with square head, yellow legs and a lot of black in wing

The window in P9 on the other hand, do not look as good...
It makes the bird a yellow-legged Herring Gull

Also... Another Lesser Black-backed with colorring from the same island as last one! What are they doing here now? Think I will make a post about them, and other fuscus like gulls at Langvannet, later this week (or next).

Larus fuscus fuscus

Again Langvannet is producing good gulls. Today there were a Lesser Black-Backed with colorring. I really had troubles with getting the numbers since it mostly was laying on the water. About a half bread later a LBBG with colorring on it leg flew over again. I took some pictures but to my frustration I thought it wasn't good enough for a safe reading. More bread and a colorringed flew over. I though of course that it was the same as last time, but now I have learned that there was at least two different colorringed LBBG at Langvannet today. One was ringed in Oslo 50 days ago. The second one on the other hand, was ringed in Sømna in Nordland as a young in 2010. More interestingly it was ringed as ssp. fuscus.

That brings us to the title: Larus fuscus fuscus. This made me look through the photos I had. I have some photos of the upperwing, enough to say that it is almost adult looking! Compared to the LBBG from Frognerkilen in the last post, it is unbelievable that they are born the same year!

Note little (if any when older) contrast between
primaries and upperwing

Old, browner feathers in coverts causes some contrast.
Two generations of primaries, with window in P10.

Two brown feathers in median coverts.
Long-winged.

Still, when identifying fuscus you have to take into account that there are very few clean fuscus that breads in Nordland today. J1MU clearly show moult and plumage quite similar to clean fuscus that breads in Finland and north-east Sweden. This bird most likley has a lot of fuscus genes within its body (but maybe also a amount of intermedius (if not graellsii)). Would have been nice to find out how this bird looks like in two-three years!

July-gulls

Long time since last post now. Now finally the focus goes back to gulls (and all the other birds that might show up!). Starts of with a Black-headed Gull.

Black-headed Gull, 2cy (1. summer), (Frognerkilen, Oslo)
On the ground it is quite adult looking, with grey upperparts
and dark on primaries. Note unevolved hood (not moult as
others at this time of the year), not as bright red bill and legs.

Black-headed Gull, 2cy (1. summer), (Frognerkilen, Oslo)
In flight we can see some old feathers in coverts, and all old
secondaries (outhermost is gone on both wings). The bird
moults P8.

At end a 3cy Lesser Black-backed Gull.

Lesser Black-backed Gull, 3cy (2. summer), (Frognerkilen, Oslo)