I have been asked to display this December gull photograph
without mentioning the country in which it was taken. Please send
comments to Id-Frontiers - thank you:
- Okay, so this was indeed photographed by me in Fort Worth
in early December 2000, thus this is presumably a smithsonianus
HERG. The three images below are the only usable ones I got of
this bird. Some have wondered if this is a 2B; I feel not, due
to the brown-ness of the flight feathers, the pale inner webs
to at least P8 (2nd-generation Ps seem to be more uniformly dark
from c. P7 - P10), and a few retained juv-looking lower scapulars.
I ask that you carefully compare the tail, primaries and
secondaries to the birds at this
page from Japan. The one apparant feature that looks
odd for SBGU is the cleanly-demarcated white head/streaked neck.
I feel that had I stated that the first photo had been taken
in Japan, this gull would have been accepted as a SBGU; I don't
claim that this bird is a SBGU, but offer this as
an example of why most 1B SBGUs may not be identifiable in North
America:
