[obol] Re: Non-Oregon Gull ID Question
- From: David Irons <llsdirons@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wayne Hoffman <whoffman@xxxxxxxx>, chuck gates <cgates326@xxxxxxxxx>, OBOL Oregon Birders Online <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 9 May 2014 06:15:36 +0000
I wholeheartedly agree with Wayne. There seems to be this notion that if you
have a photo of a bird, the bird in the photo can be identified. Aside from
apparent bill structure and pattern, there is very little to go with the gull
in this photo. Based on what I can see in the photo, there are a number of
possibilities, but nothing that really narrows down the slate of candidates.
First cycle Great Black-backed Gull is a decent guess, but it is still pretty
much a guess.
I was recently sent a blurry photo of a leucistic bird songbird perched in a
tree that had been taken in a backyard. Both the person who took the photo (a
friend of the person who sent it to me) and the person who sent it to me were
wondering if it might be a Snow Bunting. I could tell from the photo that it
was not a Snow Bunting, but I could not assign the bird to species. My
inability/unwillingness to slap a name on the mostly white bird in the photo,
caused the person who sent it to me to keep pushing the idea that it might be a
Snow Bunting. I found it a bit amusing that this person came to me asking for
an expert opinion and then wasn't willing to accept my explanation because I
could not fully solve the mystery. I suspect that if I had confidently called
it a leucistic Spotted Towhee (it did have an all-dark bill) and offered a
bunch of B.S. reasons why I was calling it that, my explanation would have been
accepted.
Insisting on assigning a name to every bird no matter how distant or how poorly
it was seen or photographed will result in lots of mistaken identifications.
Sometimes, you just need to walk away and leave a bit of mystery in your wake.
Ironically, the Mark Twain quote that Chuck Gates uses as a tag at the end of
his email is apropos in this case:
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know
for sure that just ain't so.
Dave Irons
> From: whoffman@xxxxxxxx
> To: cgates326@xxxxxxxxx; obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [obol] Re: Non-Oregon Gull ID Question
> Date: Thu, 8 May 2014 14:20:35 -0700
>
> Hi -
>
> When (particularly immature) northern gulls winter in subtropical to
> tropical areas, they experience extreme feather wear and bleaching. I
> suspect the most affected ones are not producing enough uropygial oil to
> preen properly as well. The upper wing coverts on this bird have actually
> lost most of their barbs, so the white panels showing are the shafts of
> those feathers plus the pale (normally covered) pale bases of the
> secondaries underneath. Shape and bill characters seem consistent with
> Greater Black-backed, but face it: this bird has lost to wear and bleaching
> most of the plumage markings you would use in ID. Without other gulls in
> the photo for size comparison, I would hesitate to put a name on it, and I
> would particularly not want to call it something rare.
>
> Wayne
>
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