Superior Landfill in Superior, Wisconsin was quite active with about 2000 gulls swarming the landfill. I was able to pick out a first cycle Iceland Gull. While observing this gull in flight for several minutes I was reminded that a very pale Thayer's Gull was reported a few weeks ago in Duluth so I kept notes of what I saw.
-Slightly smaller vs. Herring Gulls -Smaller bill and the bill was dark and not bi-colored as what you would see in first cycle Glaucous Gulls. * I did have two first cycle Glaucous Gulls fly side by side with the Iceland Gull for comparison. -The primaries were mostly white except for a small amount of whitish tan in the inner webs of the primaries. -The tail had a whitish tan band (same color as inner web of primaries) and there wasn't much of a contrast that made the band stick out. The overall look of the gull was very frosty looking with white and light tan scalloping of the bird. So I decided to eliminate this gull for a light juvenile Thayer's Gull and I also checked Peder Svingen's photo to make sure it wasn't the same gull and it wasn't. Other gulls at the landfill: -1 first cycle Thayer's Gull (typical coloration) -2 first cycle Glaucous Gull Mike Hendrickson Duluth, Minnesota Website: http://webpages.charter.net/mmhendrickson/ Blog: http://colderbythelakebirding.blogspot.com/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20071206/75ef47f3/attachment.html
