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About the time the digital revolution hit, I became preoccupied with other issues, and this website gradually slid into irrelevancy.
Most of the links here became broken.
I now have time to revive this site, and hope to slowly bring it up to date. I have fixed virtually all of the broken links. The links to other gull sites work.
Many of the photos were on a server at Fordham University. Over the years, those servers and addresses changed. The photos are still there and the links
have been fixed, but they are now on a secondary server that seems to be slow to respond.
The first new material was the page below for Lesser Black-backeds at Sunset Beach NC, July 22 - 27, 2017. Secondly, Lesser Black-backeds at
Sea Isle City NJ, September 12-13, 2018. Then Yellow-legged Gulls from northern Spain.
Coming soon! Gulls of Western Australia.
The latest pages:
Viewers'
Comments on the Photos.Gulls are one of the last frontiers of bird identification, and I have been a certified gull freak for 24 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 AcknowledgementsMost 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. 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 | Hatteras Mystery Bird Two |
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| A Thayer's and a Look-alike | Possible L. a. argenteus | Possible Yellow-legged Gull | Hybrid or argentatus? | Hybrids or argentatus? |
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Other Gull PagesAtlantic YLGU photos from Norman van Swelm
UK-centric discussion of juvenile YLGU
Identification of Caspian Gull
Nick Rossiter's Atlantic YLGU photos
(Old) Update History13 June 2003: Possible Kamchatka Gull in British Columbia.
4 January 2001: slides of "hybrids" from Connecticut.
16 December 2000: slides of Kelp Gulls in the Caribbean.
15 December 2000: more slides of the Easton PA mystery gull. Slides of the probable Omissus-type Herring Gull in Nova Scotia.
4 December 2000: slides of the Easton PA mystery gull, "possible YLGU."
6 July 2000: slides of the second record of Slaty-backed Gull in Ontario.
20 December 1999: added slides of Ol' One Foot.
20 December: Nick Rossiter's comments about the Longport NJ possible Yellow-legged Gull. Look here.
13 March: added more of Patrick Comins's photos.
8 March: added Hatteras Mystery Bird Two.
7 March: added Peter Post's gulls of Siberia.
25 February: Added 5 more photos to Allen Chartier's Gulls of Japan.
21 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.
