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Saturday, 12 May 2012

Mystery Gull and the swifts are back!


My parents are visiting this weekend and after so much rain recently we were delighted by today's sun! We had a lovely walk along the River Esk at Musselburgh and saw this strange gull, which has many features of a juvenile common gull, but is in other ways quite odd. Any ideas on ID will be gratefully received.... Thanks!

In other bird news, our swifts have returned! Just saw four flying around outside our window! My favourite birds!

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8 comments:

  1. Ms Sparrow7:42 pm

    It looks like a Ring-billed Gull common in the northern parts of North America far up into eastern Canada. It also resembles the Mew gull but that's only found on the west coast of the US.

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  2. Crafty Green Poet9:37 pm

    Hi Ms Sparrow, thanks - my first thought was ring billed gull, but they have yellow eyes as far as i know, this one has black eyes. The Mew gull is very similar to our common gull which would match my guess of juvenile common gull.

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  3. Draffin Bears2:02 am

    Hi Juliet,

    Lovely to see the Gulls in your part of the world and isn't it great when the birds make their return home.
    Enjoy the swifts and your weekend with your parents.

    Hugs
    Carolyn

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  4. RG3:32 am

    I don't think it is a ring billed - dark eyes.

    Vaux swifts are migrating through our area now. Counting team saw more than 5,000 going into the big chimney here on our old mental hospitial grounds last night.

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  5. Gillena Cox8:12 am

    Herring Gull
    see
    SPWBooks Presents…
    Information about North American Seagulls
    [http://www.spwickstrom.com/seagull/]

    see Wikipedia/Wikicommons The Herring Gull
    [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Herring_Gull]

    much love...

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  6. Martin8:30 am

    No swifts yet, but our house martins are back, almost a month later than they've been in the previous twelve years, since we moved here.

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  7. Crafty Green Poet8:59 am

    Rabbit's Guy - you're right about the ring billed. Wonderful you saw so many swifts!

    Gillena - definitely not a normal herring gull, they're common here and this was something very unusual. Admittedly it could have been a mutalnt herring gull...

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  8. Gillena Cox3:54 pm

    Wow you've got quite a find on your hand, what are you planning to do about this ?


    much love...

    ReplyDelete

Hi, thanks for leaving a comment! I try to visit everyone back!