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Some new pages (find the thumbnails below): Viewers'
Comments on the Photos.Gulls are one of the last frontiers of bird identification, and I have been a certified gull freak for 20 years.
I have long felt that gulls are the most interesting of all birds. True, Peregrine Falcons, Golden Eagles, and Elegant Trogons have their allures, but nothing combines for me the intellectual and aesthetic qualities of birding better than gulls, especially the "large white headed Herring Gull assemblage." Add to that the fact that an amateur like me can get decent photos of them -- without getting seasick -- and you've got an unbeatable combination. Parked at Cape Point in a four wheel drive vehicle with a couple thousand gulls standing around, on a cold cloudy day with the wind howling -- that's as close to paradise as it gets (with the possible exception of programming my computer algebra system, but that's another story).
On these pages you will find many of my photographic efforts of the last six years. Some of these birds are unidentified, and at least one is controversial. I invite all serious gull watchers to send me opinions on those, and I will include the comments in the future. Let me know if I can quote you.
But I've included images that I hope will be of interest to more casual gull watchers as well. Some of the shots of immature birds ought to be educational to almost everyone. For example, look at the images of unusual Herring Gulls that probably are, indeed, Herring Gulls ("Herring Gull" always means L. argentatus smithsonianus here).
This page is under construction and probably always will be. Right now, I've got only about one half the images that I plan to put here eventually. In the future, look for shots of Yellow-legged Gulls from Portugal and France, Lesser Black-backeds from Holland, Mediterranean Gull, and more of the gull slides from the collection of the late Claudia Wilds. I might have space to sponsor some other images. If you have some gull shots that you want to put here let me know.
Image Quality About Me AcknowledgementsI learned most of what I know about gulls from many years of Christmas Counts on the Outer Banks. Thanks go to my fellow gull students, especially Allen Bryan, John Fussell, Harry LeGrand, Mike Tove, and John Wright.
Most importantly, I could not have produced this without the long term support of my family, especially my wife Susan and daughter Joanna.
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| Lesser Black-backed Gull | Great Black-backed Gull | Slaty-backed Gull (?) | Western Gull (?) |
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| Thayer's Gull (?) | Scandinavian Herring Gull | Yellow-legged Gull at Hatteras | The New Jersey Mystery Bird |
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| Immature Herring Gulls | Odd Herring Gulls | An oddly small first winter Herring Gull | Adult Herring Gull Wings |
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| Pale, Worn, or Faded Herring Gulls | Possible L. a. argenteus in Connecticut | Possible L. a. argentatus in New York | A Probable Herring X Lesser Black-backed |
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| California Gulls at Hatteras | Kelp X Herring Hybrids | Large Lesser Black-backed - or something else? |
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| Possible Yellow-legged Gull in New Jersey | Some shots of Herring Gull from England | Gulls of Holland: Herring, Lesser Black-backed, Yellow-legged, Common |
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| Yellow-legged Gulls of Portugal | The Maryland Kelp Gull |
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Other Gull PagesAngus Wilson's Site has a lot of gull photos.
Yellow-legged Gull in Newfoundland
Update History21 February: Added the Maryland Kelp Gull page. Added some notes to the Slaty-backeds of Japan page.
12 February: Changed some of the age labels on the Japan Slaty-backed page.
11 February: Added Allen Chartier's Slaty-backeds from Japan.
2 February: Added Portugal Yellow-legged Gulls page.
2 February: Added many new comments to the Viewers' Comments Page.
8 January: Added shots of a pale December first-winter Herring Gull in New York.
5 January: Added possible L. a. argentatus in New York.
3 January 1999: Added second possible L. a. argenteus in Connecticut.
28 December 1998: Added possible L. a. argenteus in Connecticut.
7 September: Added the Faded Herring Gulls page.
6 September: Added the Herring Gull Wings page.
5 September: Added the responses page.
4 September: Added Holland and England Gulls.
3 September: Added the Probable Herring X Lesser Black-backed, the California Gulls at Hatteras, and the oddly small first winter Herring Gull.
7 April: Added Longport New Jersey "YLGU".
30 March: Added Kelp X Herring hybrid and Large Lesser.
23 March: Added more links.
20 March: Added biography page.
19 March: Added details of tail and rump to NJ Mystery Bird writeup. Manipulated some images to be less than 30K. Added explanation of image quality.
18 March: Made minor changes in wording on several pages. Replaced three of the original photos on the NJ Mystery Bird page, numbers 2,3, and 5. Added a hits counter.
17 March 1998: first day.
Number of accesses to this page since
18 March 1998:
