The Lincolnshire Bird Club

In another part of the forum Ed Mackrill wrote

Can I also throw this open to Forum readers - the use of 'winter' and 'summer' plumages to describe Gulls can be misleading. Phil writes (this bird is probably a 2nd winter moulting into its third calendar year.) Since the 1st of January the bird has been in it's 3rdCY. Gulls can be in winter plumage from September and in summer plumage from January and there can be several months difference between individual moult cycles. With adults the terms basic plumage and alternate plumage are more useful - Black-headed Gulls with 'black' heads at the moment have moulted from basic plumage ( non-breeding plumage) into alternate plumage ( breeding plumage) even though it is not yet chronologically mid-winter!! It seems that with Iceland Gulls eye colour changes late 2CY-early 3CY. Kumliens should have a dark eye into 4CY.

I'd be interested to hear what others think. For me it's just replacing one set of words with which we are familiar and replacing them with another which are foreign (American) and with which we are not familiar. If there is confusion, such as Ed refers to above, it's usually because the observer hasn't been quite explicit enough. Incidentally, I have seen Black-headed Gulls in basic, pre-alternate and alternate plumages in the last week.

John

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Contact: recorder_north@lincsbirdclub.co.uk

While on the subject, perhaps BB readrers could take a detailed look at the Caspian Gull article (Dec 2011). PLate 434 photo and caption left me a bit confused !?

Kev