Adult eastern Caspian Gulls from Azerbaijan

Hannu Koskinen, Visa Rauste and myself visited Azerbaijan this summer (21 June-4 July) the study its breeding gulls.  We were extremely fortunate and managed to obtain lots of material on the gulls, notably visiting Baku landfill site and a breeding island in the Caspian that contained more than 1000 breeding pairs. I have not had time to do any analysis of this material, but thought it worthwhile to post some examples on the blog of the birds we were seeing.  As far as I can establish, very little material exists (is available/published) showing what these eastern Caspians look like, so I hope that the pictures posted here form a useful resource. I've highlighted below, in one or two images, things of specific interest.  Unless stated otherwise, each photo shows a different individual. All these images were from Baku landfill site.

A classic Caspian Gull pattern, similar/identical to many western ponticus

Note the length, shape and colour of the P10 tongue, compared to others highlighted below (and relative to the ponticus birds we see in Europe)

Slightly longer tongue than the bird highlighted above, but similar smooth shape

Note serrated and almost diffuse edge to p10 tongue

A different, jagged-edged tongue.

An intermediate/short tongue, with the length of the white tip shorter than the length of the black band. Tongue distincly grey, rather than pure white.

 Very bright bare parts and a rather pale eye.P10 typical Caspian.

Scary short P10 tongue

 Above are a couple of birds with extensive black across the tip of P10 . 

A bird with a thayeri pattern on P9 and 10. That such birds exist in the east is notable.

 The same individual is shown in the above 2 images

 Rather a lot of black in the wingtip - note extensive black in tip of P10, small P9 mirror and black to P4.

A close up of a bird with only one or two speckles in the eye. In most field views this would look pale eyed.

 thayeri patterns

 Rather robust bill and short P10 tongue

 Limted inward extension of black in the primaries.

Now for some examples of more problematic birds. This bird has rather a lot of black in the outer two primaries, and looked a fraction darker grey in the field.  Steppe Gull (barabensis) should not be in Azerbaijan in summer; to my eye (in field views) it was not dark enough for barabensis  but tricky to judge this in the bright, sunny conditions. Of course much remains to be determined and it may be that barabensis is breeding in this area; we had a few 2 cy birds that appeared to be this taxon..

Same bird is shown above and below. Rather bright bare parts and a pale eye, and a distinctly grey P10 tongue. Ive seen michahellis in Romania like this (e.g. the final image below). We had another bird that was even more like Yellow-legged Gull; this bird will be featured elsewhere so I've not posted it here.

Yellow-legged Gull, Mamaia, Romani (January) This primary pattern is very like some birds seen in Azerbaijan.  Food for thought.

First-summer Yellow-legged Gulls, plus other things, Spain, May 2012

I had 10 days working in Spain (18-28 May) so took the chance to visit the Ebro Delta and have a look at some michahellis. I was especially interested in the 2cy birds - a selection of which is shown here.  All were photographed at Sant Carles de la Rapita, on the Southern shore of the delta.

The image above and the three below are all of the same individual. Variability in 2 cy birds at this time of year is bewildering, but all very different to how our British Herring Gulls are looking right now.

 A rather dapper 3 cy

Some adults

As I was working in Lleida I took the chance to visit the city dump - a great place for black kites

King Eider, Ythan Estuary.

These images are all from 14 April.

Iceland and Glaucous Gulls, Peterhead

Still around 10 white winged gulls present at Peterhead yesterday (Sunday 18 March). This post shows a selection of the birds.

First (above) and second (below) winter Glaucous have both been around for several weeks

The first winter bird

First winter Glaucous

Iceland Gull: here are a few of the birds present at the weekend.

A Russian Common Gull (heinei)?

Keep your eye on the red dot....

Here is a Common Gull that I saw briefly (very frustrating) at Peterhead on 26 February. I've been playing around with criteria to identify heinei Common Gull and it turns out that this bird is a perfect match. Here are the images; some text and analysis follow...

It is the left hand bird in these two flight pics.

It was picked up as being distinctly darker than the canus and lacking their blue tone. Details in the wingtip are key. Note: (i) the deep black band on primary 5 (canus normally has a thin, uneven or broken band, or black only on one web), (ii) black extending all the way to the primary coverts on P8 (canus only 50-75 % of the way), (iii) extensive black on P7 (more than 80% of the way to the primary coverts; canus mostly less than 50%) and (iv) a long black 'bayonet' on the outer web of P6 extending for approx 65 % of the way to the primary coverts (maximum in my canus sample is 53%, with most having black only 20-40%). The overall result of these details is a wing tip that has a lot more black and less white than canus. All of these features evident on the Peterhead bird perfectly match heinei, as far as I can establish.

Can we be sure? Well, I characterised a sample of 55 birds using 8 wing tip traits and analysed them using PCA. The diagram at the top of this post is the result. The Peterhead bird is the red dot: it falls outwith the area occupied by canus and smack within the space occupied by heinei. This is fairly strong evidence, based on multiple traits analysed simultaneously, that this bird better fits Russian Common Gull L. canus heinei than nominate canus. Food for thought...