Thursday, November 27, 2008

Poll

Just a quick question for all my readers out there: 

Of all the gulls in North America, which species do you think is THE #1 most difficult to accurately ID? 

Post your answer in the comments section. 

3 comments:

David Bell said...

juv. mew vs. juv. ring-bill - could just be because i haven't seen many mew gulls...

JoshC said...

I find that juv. MEGU and juv. RBGU are hardish, but quite easy if you know what to look for.

I would have to say Kumlien's Gull and Iceland Gull are pretty hard, but technically they aren't a separate species, so I will say juvenile Herring and Lesser Black-backed, because they are very similar to each other.

David Bell said...

If Kumlien's Gull and Iceland Gull were different sp. then they'd definitely be the hardest to separate... LBB and herg are hard unless you get a good look at the wings, esp. due to the variability of herrings...we had a bird at the dump a few weeks ago that fit perfectly with LBB but turned out to be a herg when it flew as it had the light 'windows' in the inner primaries. Gulls in general can be hard to ID unless you have experience, and even then all the hybrids get confusing.