SBGU01-09.jpg
The first episode in the saga of the 1999 Pellet Plant was (by my
assertion) the ‘best bird’. Or course, whether this is ‘fake news’ remains
to be seen. This 2nd installment is perhaps the ‘best PP photo’. It
portrays the flavour of this great birding resource of yesteryear. The
Great Black-backed Gull of the 1st installment has as ID competitors other
dark-mantled gulls: Western Gull [southern (dark) & northern (less dark)
races], Lesser Black-backed, Slaty-backed, and a world full of others less
likely here (Yellow-footed, Kelp….). These 9 photos are of the same gull,
exulting in the fantastic habitat it found so far away from home. In some
(especially older) references, Slaty-backed is said to be a massive gull.
Certainly not this one that had, in 1999, quite a few companions, which
will follow. I’ll post my 'ideas' about this bird in a day or two.
Comments encouraged.
As to the ‘Great Black-backed Gull’ (GBBG) of installment 1. The jury is
certainly still out, with Slaty-backed being a strong contender. I’m
pretty much reliving Jan 1999 here in a chain-of-consciousness mode and
will revisit it eventually.
As is well known, mantle color is important in gulls but it subject to a
wide array of effects: camera settings, intensity and angle of the sun,
post-processing (these are scanned slides from 1999), etc. One approach is
to compare colors, darkness with nearby gulls of familiar species.
Bob OBrien
PS If you get OBOL in digest mode which may lack photos, & you are
*actually* reading this arcane stuff, and want to see them, the photos are
available here:
https://www.freelists.org/archive/obol
Search the month’s list for 'armchair' ; the image is at the end of that
post and needs to be clicked on, at least on my system.
Attachment:
SBGU01-09.jpg
Description: JPEG image
