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Sorry about the shots, they were all at the dump. Normally all we have are ring-billed gulls but today there were a few new ones.
I also discovered that people think you're a bit strange when you sit at the dump with a camera...on the bright side, more than a few folks learned today that a gull isn't just a gull
First pic. is this really dark brown one with a solid black beak. There were a few of them. Slightly bigger than our ring-billed gulls.
Second we have what I think are Herring Gulls but when I compare them with the pics. in Bird Files these guys are almost black compared to those. Giant gulls they stand much, much taller than our regulars.
This one is more like the herring gulls in Bird Files. Is there another gull with the red on the beak? Because this and it's kind were smaller than the giant black-backed one above.
#1 is a juvenile American Herring Gull Larus smithsonianus; they are darker than juv. [European] Herring Gulls L. argentatus (which did you look up to compare?)
#2 is a Great Black-backed Gull - largest gull in the world, and fairly common in winter on the Great Lakes (and substantially larger than Slaty-backed).
#3 is an adult American Herring Gull. Almost impossible to tell from Europe's Herring Gull (the two were only split recently, when DNA studies found they weren't particularly closely related), but a bird at an interior North American location is highly unlikely to be the European species (there are a few records of European birds on the east coast, primarily Newfoundland, but not many).
Thanks Resin! The Great Black-Backed Gull is a new one for me!
I just couldn't see that dark bird turning into a lighter coloured bird...LOL In the back of my mind I thought juvenile something but didn't want to believe it maybe.
