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!