Old One Foot

Bill Smith (pwsmith@techline.com) writes:

The principal documentation for this bird was a paper by Charles Duncan, published in Am. Birds 36: 899-902, 1982. Although Duncan identifies the bird as a Western Gull, that identification was not accepted (to the best of my knowledge) by the Florida or Alabama records committees. Florida, at least, has not re-reviewed it in recent times.


To the best of my knowledge, no one has attempted to apply "modern gull identification techniques" (if there really is such a thing :-) to this bird.


Go for it, folks!

First three: Taken Oct 24-1 Nov 1977 by Mary Lou Mattis. This was the first occurrence of the bird, when it was originally identified as a "subadult" LBBG, with "flesh-colored" legs, and published in Alabama Birdlife by Bob Duncan (no relation) and Tom Imhoff.


Next three, taken 9/17/78 by me. Fully adult plumage and bright pink legs--this is when I and friends refound the bird (not seen in the intervening months) and realized based on leg-color that it couldn't be adult LBBG. These slides were sent to many people who agreed it was not LBBG. Many felt it was Western Gull, but few could be certain.


Later other photos were taken by me on 9/19/81. The bird reappears after not being seen for 3 years! Now armed with all the things people told me I should have looked for previously (eye-ring color, etc.) I became convinced that it is Western Gull, and published it in Amer. Birds. Others rejected this idea out of hand and concocted a hybrid GBBG and LBBG without considering the general lack of breeding range overlap of those species.


One interesting feature seen in the very first slide (by M. L. Mattis, 1 Nov 77) is that the bird is clearly smaller than typical Herring Gulls. This pointed toward LBBG originally when leg-color was not decisive (and when much less info about gull ID was known). Some rejected Western Gull based on this size. In fact there is a big variation in Western Gulls-- I have photographed two standing side-by-side with very different body sizes.

A	B	C
D	E	F

since December 20, 1999