Posted by David Fix (206.13.45.149) on April 17, 2001 at 13:42:17:
The April 2001 gull appears to have been hatched in 2000...but is the bill actually yellowish? It looks a lot like a Glaucous Gull but the darkness extending up the mandibular tomium looks odd. The pale tip-of-bill we could chalk up to a mid-second-spring bird. The bill looks petite for the head size. The crown is also high-domed, but this could be a female gull. Is this a smaller barrovianus Glaucous? I see faint but discernible, clubby whitish eye-arcs on many less-worn 1B GLGU and those are visible here...interesting if probably not a direct aid to the ID. If I saw this bird in life, aged it as 1B, and it had a non-pinkish bill with such an irregular demarcation on the bill, I suppose I would not ID it as a Glaucous Gull. I do run across a few quasi-Glaucous Gulls I simply walk away from. Does 'Iceland' in whatever form enter into the equation? Is that the point here? The bird does seem to have a rather heavy---if not horsey---head&bill jizz not too unlike a Herring Gull (at least) and not suggesting, say, that of Thayer's / Kumlien's (to my eye). Hmm.