Lighter shades of pale: Some adult Kumlien's Gulls from Newfoundland (Jan. 2013)

I spent a great week at St John's, Newfoundland in late January.  Many thanks to Peter Adriaens, Jan Baert and Bruce Mactavish for great company on the trip and many stimulating discussions - I learnt a lot. Here is a scence from Pier 17 in the main harbour area.  Kumlien's heaven.

Time was spend between 2 or 3 main areas, photographing gulls.  Above and below is an adult Kumlien's at Quidi Vidi lake.

A fair amount is now known amount Kumlien's, although much remains to be determined.  A key paper on adults is that of Howell and Mactavish (2003; Alula 9, 2-15). Much information was also recently put on the Gull Research Organisation (ORG) web site - for many images and info on primary patterns and eye pigmentation, see http://gull-research.org/glaucoides/pdf/primpatterns.html. So, there is no point in repeating information here.  All I have done in this post is to pull out some examples of a few extreme adult birds seen on the trip.

A pale bird, both in terms of grey tones and the apparent absence of any dark pigmentation in the primaries. (Tempting to think about birds with paler upperparts as glaucoides, but see final images in this post).

A bird with just a touch of ash grey on the outer web of the outer primary, ' b' in Fig 2 of Howell and Mactavish

Dark on the outer web of 3 primaries (b or c in Howell and Mactavish)

 Now dark bands across P7 and 8 along with dark up the outer webs (closest to e)

 Dark pigmentation includes bar across P 9 as well as P8 and 7, although no dark up the ouer webs.

More dark still (closest to  k).

 ..and more again...but notice that the tone is still just dark ash grey

OK, now we are getting interesting.....The same bird is shown on the water and in the wing close-up above. An example of a dark bird, close to black on several feathers and the dark is very extensive. But notice that P10 has only an isolated dark spot within the white tip, and the mirror on P9 reaches the outer web; these features help seperate such birds from Thayer's.

This is a very dark bird, the darkest we saw and getting close to Thayer's (e.g. vert dark slaty-black tone, full black band across the tip of P10 and dark on both webs of P5). On P9 we would like a Thayer's to have a complete dark outer web but on this bird the mirror extends across the outer web and so reaches the cutting edge of the feather....that said, to complicate matters( on the image below showing its right wing), it is clear that the pattern is different...!   

Here on the right wing it has more black on P9 but less on P10 than on the left wing!

This is the bird standing. The Thayer's ish impression was enhanced by the solidly dark eye, but the structure was no different to the accompanying Kumlien's.  A great bird to see.

And at the other end of the spectrum, a bird to show that individuals with paler grey upperparts do not always have unmarked primaries.

As can be seen, the primary pattern is closest to b rather than a ( a has no dark pigmentation in any primaries). 

Isabelline Wheatear: odd pose/behaviour

Just been sorting out images for a talk that I'm giving and was reminded of this bird that I saw a few years ago.  A great bird, but I have always wondered about the wings-open pose: has anyone come across this behaviour before in this species?

Some interesting and some spectacular birds from Azerbaijan

These images are all from a trip to Azerbaijan in June/July 2012.  From a birding perspective, Azerbaijan is an incredibly interesting country, because of a mixture of some spectacular birds and a number of eastern taxa that occur (or potentially occur) in Britain as vagrants. Pictured above is a Blue-cheeked Bee-eater - one of the spectacular birds.

 Eastern Black Redstart

 Adult and juvenile Snow Finch

 Juvenile Snow Finch

 Adult Snow Finch

 Eastern Nightingale golzii

 An interesting (grey-headed) female red-backed Shrike

An intersting male Red-backed Shrike - note the white in the base of the primaries

 Juvenile samamisicus Redstart

 An adult female.  Adult birds were very worn during the visit in June/July.

 And and adult male -  the silvery wing panel is very evident on this individual.

 White Wagtail.  The taxon that occurs in Azerbaijan has extensively white greater coverts

 Lesser Kestrel

 Lesser Kestrel

 Blue-checked Bee-eaters

 Rufous Bush Robin

 A male samamisicus - note the reduced wing panel on this individual, related to wear

 Calandra Larks

 Calandra Lark

 Rock Bunting

 Rock Thrush (male)

 Rock Thrish (Juv)

 Shore Lark

 Common Rosefinch

 Rose-coloured Starlings

 An adult

A juvenile

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.