Date: 10/29/25 4:28 pm From: Phil Brown <pdpbrown...> Subject: Re: [MBBIRDS] Juvenile Gull ID Help
Hi Kate,
Iceland Gull (Thayer's) should have pale edging to the primaries, and the
primaries look too dark to me, The bill looks bi-colored too (a bit hard to
tell from this angle).
Regards, Phil Brown
On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 4:13 PM Kate Edwards <kmedwards400...> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I was reviewing some photos of a flock of gulls I took at the San Lorenzo
> River mouth back in February 2023. My SD card filled up so I'm finally
> getting around to sorting through them. At the time I remember taking
> photos of any odd juveniles to a) help my identification skills and b)
> hopefully capture an Iceland gull in the flock I could ID later. There were
> most of our N. California species present with Short-billed, Ring-Billed,
> Western, California, and at least a couple of Herring.
>
> One of them I landed on as a juvenile Ring-Billed gull due to a
> combination of size, black on just the tip of the bill, and overall
> messiness of the plumage. The pink legs threw me off at first, but I found
> other images on eBird showing them with pink feet during the first year or
> so. Photos of this one are uploaded here
> <https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/644334666>.
>
> This other one is probably the same, but the plumage seemed a little more
> uniform and the bill was fully black. The head shape also seemed different,
> but that field marker has always been hard for me to distinguish. I think
> I'm leaning towards Ring-Billed, but I just have to check I don't have a
> photo of a lifer sitting right in front of me.
> [image: Thayers1.JPG]
> More pictures of both birds can be found on my ebird checklist here
> <https://ebird.org/checklist/S127970740>. I appreciate any tips to
> getting reliable ID's on these little guys!
>
> Happy birding,
> Kate Edwards
>
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