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I was flicking through Sibley (not as painful as it may sound, by the way) in a recent idle moment and came upon the description of Lesser Black-backed Gull Larus fuscus which concludes with the paragraph, “Nearly all North American records are of the paler mantled Britain/Iceland population [graellsii]. A few records apparently refer to […]

Without trying to get up the nose of any serious gull-watcher out there who hasn’t had the opportunity to travel that I have, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have seen virtually every single species of northern hemisphere gull in the last twenty years (and to do that you really need to get yourself out to […]

…when it’s been renamed in the newly-released 49th Supplement to the A.O.U. Check-list of North American Birds, Seventh Edition.
The new supplement includes various and sundry switches of interest to North American listers, ornithologists, and taxonomists but probably very few others. Paramount among the changes is a new classification and sequence of genera and species adopted […]

I’m lucky enough to spend a great deal of time flying around the world finding unusual birds, but every so often I get lucky enough to find that something unusual has flown round the world to me. At about 15:30 an email popped up to say that a Franklin’s Gull had been found on […]

Mike’s photo of Corey and I (I’m the older and not so good looking one of the pair) in his typically evocative Put on a Happy Face post was taken at St. John’s Pond in Long Island, and just off to one side of the image is a Ring-billed Gull. Looking through the photos I’d […]

Chrissy Guarino is a birder’s birder. In using that term I mean that not only does she have the requisite skills in terms of identifying avians but that she also brings a certain joy to birding that sometimes is in short supply on those long hard slogs that may or may not have a […]

On Friday the weather forecasters said rain. We (Daisy, some assorted family members, and I) decided to ignore said forecasters and head down to La Jolla, the famous northern coastal suburb of San Diego, for the heck of it. Previous visits there had netted me some pretty good looks at a variety of gulls, Brown Pelicans, shorebirds that like […]

Much as I would like to spend another 24 hours awake writing up a long blog about what a great day I had - and I did, even if I didn’t break any listing records - I do need to get a little sleep before I use the two hours of available time tomorrow […]

Niagara Falls is a world-renowned tourist destination because of, well, the really freaking big waterfalls there. Because of the monstrous falls a host of tourist traps, from casinos to mini-golf, have sprung up, to say nothing of industrial projects (mostly on the American side) that take advantage of the hydro-electric power generated by the […]

My day Saturday was spent gulling the Niagara River, a most gull-friendly spot, especially in early winter. Three species were plentiful: Bonaparte’s Gull, Herring Gull, and Ring-billed Gull. I hiked down to the floor of the gorge at “The Whirlpool” and was amazed by the sheer number of Bonaparte’s Gulls that circled ceaselessly […]

When one is doing a Big Year in New York one must go on pelagic trips. As many as possible. Because I wasn’t doing a Big Year at the beginning of the year I didn’t go on the February trip out of Freeport so I had a giant hole in my year lists where wonderful […]

I wrote a post yesterday about how a common bird in one area is sometimes seen as being a vagrant in another: specifically how some relatively common North American birds (eg American Robin, Black and White Warbler, Dark-eyed Junco) cause twitchers on my side of “the pond” to - well, start ‘twitching’. Vagrancy isn’t of […]

The alarm went off at 3:30 AM and I woke up unsure of where I was but convinced I missed the boat. Of course I didn’t but it was a horrible time and way to awaken. I showered, brewed some coffee, and was off to Freeport for a See Life Paulagics trip on the boat […]

The Black-tailed Gull Larus crassirostris is endemic to North-East Asia, breeding on sandy and rocky shores, islands and cliffs in the Sea of Japan/East Sea and wintering south as far as Hong Kong where it is a scarce visitor. It has not yet been recorded in Europe, but is an increasingly identified vagrant to North […]

Shorebirds and warblers aren’t, of course, the only groups of birds migrating at the moment - and the excitement that greeted one particular gull species in Alaska this summer reminded me (yet again) that a bird one set of birders walks past without a second glance will cause another set near-coronaries as they sprint across […]

One of my favorite things about birding Jones Beach is how even if there aren’t rare birds around there is still plenty to see. Even when the beach is crowded with swimmers there are still gulls and terns and plovers living their lives, and because they are relatively used to people one can often […]

“Gulls of the Americas”,
Steve Howell and Jon Dunn (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
Identifying gulls - particularly 1st and 2nd year birds - is one of birding’s most difficult skills to master, as anyone who’s ever stepped onto a beach in eg California, Kuwait, or Korea will know all too well. The variation in plumage seems endless. The […]

Gulls… we birders can’t live with them and we can’t live without them. The gregarious, opportunistic, adaptable avians of the family Laridae are never hard to find, no matter how far you are from an ocean, but can prove nigh impossible to identify definitively. The trouble with gulls, at least from a birding perspective (picnickers […]

So I woke up this morning and checked my email. An Ivory Gull in Piermont! What a wonderful opportunity to see this gorgeous species for the first time. Too bad I had to work, and, worse yet, my work would take me to Poughkeepsie, NY, more than halfway to Piermont…so close and […]

Vega Gulls Larus vegae
Choshi Port, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. 30 January 2006
 
The Vega Gull Larus vegae is the common “Herring Gull” of North-east Asia, breeding on islands and cliffs in the High Arctic and wintering widely throughout eg South Korea and Japan.

Structurally Vega is typically ill-proportioned - often looking rather short-legged, front heavy and rather large-headed […]