drewtube: yellow-legged gull in Hyannis, MA, err.... a gull with yellow legs

Anna and I zoomed up to Hyannis today in the horrendous weather this AM to try and see this Gull in Veterans Park on the west side of town. The weather still sucked when we got there, but the gull in question was easily found right away, hanging out with some Herring Gulls and a Ring-billed Gull. They were quite cooperative, as they seemed to be accustomed to people feeding them. They would get closer when we rolled the windows down, but that meant the nasty sleet would blow right into the car.

So, I was really hoping that this would turn out to be an easy Yellow-legged Gull, a species which normally hangs out in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Upon further inspection though, it isn't quite that easy. This bird's head is darker, and the streaks that run from the nape into the face extend down and into the breast. The mantle color seems right, but the bill to me seemed smaller than nearby Herring Gulls, which should be the other way around. The spot on the Gonys to me looked like the right size and color red, and the leg coloration seems to be right. The biggest plumage character for me that indicates that it might not be a pure Yellow-legged Gull is that it has a darker sub-terminal band on the underside of the secondaries, though I am no Gull expert and have never seen Yellow-legged Gull before.

Having said all of that, this was formally considered a subspecies of Herring Gull, and as we know, Herring Gulls can exhibit a wide array of plumage characters. Herring Gulls hybridize with Lesser Black-backed Gulls which seems to be a likely candidate for this bird given the dark sub-terminal band on the secondaries. This is a character that LBBG exhibits. Anyway, it was a fun morning, and a good gull to study, I just wish the weather had been nicer.