Just to add some comments: 1) I'm not at all a gull expert. I have, however, seen thousands of these. They're very common on the east coast of South Africa (where I'm from) and at certain inland sites.
2) I guess this bird may well be of the South American subspecies, in which case my further comments may be irrelevant. 3) This bird, judging by the birds I've seen in South Africa, may be in non-breeding plumage. It's certainly not in the brightest breeding plumage I've ever seen, which would include a more solidly gray head, brighter and more evenly red bill and legs, and a red eye-ring. It is, however, not a juvenile. 4) Grey-headed Gull is in South Africa a bird equally happy on the coast and hundreds of miles inshore. There are breeding colonies on wetlands around Johannesburg at an altitude of approx 6,000ft above sea level. So this Brooklyn bird could, in theory, move anywhere. 5) In the late 1980s we had a Franklin's Gull pitch up in a Grey-headed Gull breeding colony in a small wetland called Rolfe's Pan in an industrial area near Johannesburg, the first record for South Africa. It tried to pair up with Grey-headed, but none of the locals was interested. It then disappeared at the end of the breeding season, only to reappear the next, and I think the next, breeding seasons. The theory was that the bird had been displaced eastward across the Atlantic and was making north-south migrations/movements in synchrony with the movements of Franklin's in the New World. So, maybe this gull is in a Laughing Gull colony somewhere, trying to find a mate? ;) 6) In recent years Franklin's Gull has become a more-or-less annual 'vagrant' sighting around Cape Town - I've seen single birds with a big group of Hartlaub's Gull that sleeps on a lit area of lawn near my house on more than one occasion. They seem to hang out with Hartlaub's Gull, a species roughly their size, rather than larger gulls. Cheers Adam -- Adam Welz Brooklyn, NY -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
