Odd title, but there you go, A fair bit on gulls here. I think I'm ready to try some species-specific blog pages for gulls, that will relate to my topic pages dated at the start of the year so that I can find them more easily!
Black-headed Gulls first.
This is an adult bird just moulting onto breeding plumage, with perfect "new moons" on the folded primaries caused by the appearance of narrow white tips to the primaries at this stage. These new moons disappear in the summer, as the primaries become black-tipped!
The extent of the breeding head pattern in this bird is quite well set out already, half way through January in a mild winter to date (18.01.14), in a bird that stood out as an early moulter compared to the majority. The white eye ring is already reasonably clear.
As an adult in winter plumage it has a dark red bill with a dark tip, not as drooping as a Med Gull. The legs are a dark red as well, and should become darker as the season progresses. I do wonder whether this due to an increasing deposition of melanin.
The light was not bad today and the mantle and coverts were a lovely attractive sea-grey colour.
A Herring Gull seen quite far away had a good black bar across the bill, quite a bit of brown on the wing, and not too much white spotting on the primaries. I couldn't see any dark tip to the tail, but if there was one there, it would certainly have been a 3rd calendar year bird, as opposed to a 4th.
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