Birding Mail - Jersey Birds - [JerseyBirds] Weequahic Park Gull Photo

Andy Lamy and I headed over to Weequahic Park in Newark at 1:30pm to look
for the possible Thayer's Gull found by Rick Wright. We found the bird in
question. I'm trying to work through the identification (having limited
experience with this -dare I say- species), but wanted to get this out
quickly in case anyone else was planning on trying for it.

There were only 3 large gulls (among a few hundred ringers) in the
juvenile/1st year range. This bird structurally had a rounder head and
smaller dark bill(when you cranked in on it at 60x the base appeared to be
slightly lighter). I saw the bird in flight once and the primaries were
lighter than the two other first year Herring Gulls and did not show the
pronounced light, contrasting "window" that Herring's do, but more of a
broad lighter area over much of the primaries-further out towards the
wingtip.
When the bird was at rest facing away the few primaries you could see the
underside of seemed pale.
I never viewed this bird side by side with the other 1st year birds, but my
impression was that is seemed slightly smaller. Although in life the bird
was slightly warmer in base tone than the photo presents, it was still much
paler than I would have expected.

As I shared with Rick, my gut was saying no at the time, but at the same
time I had (and continue to have) a hard time turning it into anything
else. I was expecting a browner bird. I'm not sure what it is, but after
creating this side by side comparison I sure hope it's there the next time
I go!

I have uploaded one of Andy's photo and a comparison at these links.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/71628647@N05/6844173599/in/photostream

Comparison:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71628647@N05/6844173779/in/photostream/

I also found some useful information at this link:
http://thebirdguide.com/gulls/herr_vs_thay.htm

Cheers,

Sean Sime
Maplewood, NJ

How to report NJ bird sightings: <http://www.njbrc.net/reportto.html>



.
	(Steller's Sea Eagle by Pete Morris/Birdquest)