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mystery gull



First I would like to make a correction, it was of
course Karen Piplani not Karen Bearden on the trip
with us.  Sorry to all offended parties. Can I claim
extreme fatigue or do I have to fall back on chronic
stupidity when it comes to names?
Anyway, the consensus is that our gull was a Lesser
Black-back, probably third winter.  A LBBG would have
been our best guess but we were troubled by:
1) no white mirrors in the wingtips
2) the bicolored bill
3) the snow white tail
4) the darkness of the back, it really was a bit
darker than the typical LBBG (L. f. graellsii) we see
in North america
5) leg color (although this was hard to be sure of)

We decided to post it so the experts could tell us
whether that much variation from what we might call a
'typical' LBBG was possible. It seems that it can be. 
Thanks for the info everybody.
Bruce Young
young715@yahoo.com
Durham NC


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