The following are digital images taken on 1/30/00 from the boat-ramp on Water St. in Newburyport (next to Joppa Park) of a white-winged gull. The bird was about 0.5 mi away. The poor image quality is also partially attributable to shooting the images through a spotting scope using a new digital camera. Note that several observers watched this bird for at least 30 minutes, on the surface of the water, walking (pink legs), and in flight, but we failed to reach consensus on an identity. We all had better looks than indicated in these images. What do you think? Let me know by e-mail.

In these first two images, note that this bird is a "white-winged gull", with a medium sized yellow bill, pronounced dark area around or at the eye, and some dark in the primaries.

This image shows the pattern of the small amount of dark on the primaries, and demonstrates that the shade of the dark feathering is a charcoal gray - not light gray, or black.

So, what do you call a (roughly) Herring Gull-sized gull with a small amount of charcoal in the primaries? Kumlien's Iceland Gull, which would be a reasonable bird to find at this time of year (but should have a yellow eye and lighter primaries?) or Thayer's Gull which would be unusual at any time in Massachusetts (has a dark eye but the primaries should be darker?) or some hybrid or just an aberrant individual?

Several of us noticed that more than just the eye was dark - the area around the eye was (at least) shadowed, which should be obvious in these images. Harrison (Seabirds An Identification Guide, Plate 62, 224X) shows a dark wash around the eye in the one painting of a Kumlien's (but he shows the upper wing as lighter than the above images.)

• "gentle, rounded look to the head, the gray primaries, the palish gray back, and the longish look to the wings all add up to Iceland Gull (Kumlien's). Thayer's is darker, stubbier, more blocky-headed, and has darker primary tips. The darkish eye (how dark?) is actually one way the Brits separate Kumlien's from nominate glaucoides Iceland." - Mark Szantyr
• "I put it down to being a dark Iceland-type. I certainly could be wrong, but it was sort of just a continuation of the features between the full adult and the almost adult we'd just seen. Of course, Thayer's is probably really Iceland anyway." - Geoff LeBaron
• "According to folks like Dick Veit, ALL east coast Iceland Gulls are considered to be Kumlien's (unless proven in the hand to be otherwise?). There is of course tremendous variation among these buggers, and the real light ones will resemble the nominate race and the real dark ones will resemble the Thayer's race (I persist in calling Thayer's a race of the Iceland). When a CA birder (may have been that Dunn fellow) was taken along the coast of Maine and shown all the various local Kumlien type Iceland Gulls, his comment was that just about all of them would be called Thayers in CA!" - Soheil n Zendeh
• "I'm not sure if this is the same individual or not, but the following link is an image of an Iceland Gull I photographed in Salisbury in late November in the parking lot. It was fairly tame so I got a good shot of it. Note the relatively dark iris and relatively dark tips to the primaries. From what little I understand, most (if not all?) of the Iceland Gulls we see around here are kumlien's with varying amounts of darkness to the primary tips in adult birds. Most should have yellow iris's, but this isn't the first Iceland Gull I've seen with a dark iris. I don't have Peter Grant's Gull ID book with me right now, but I believe he states that a significant percentage of Iceland Gulls can have dark iris's." - Steve Mirick
• "I too was part of the congregation at the seawall on Sunday and my best guess at the time (and I confess I have not had to time to research it any further) was a Kumlien's. While the primaries had some darker feathers, none looked black to me. Most looked gray to my eye. Also, I wasnt sure if Kumlien's could have a dark eye. I mentioned the gull to Steve Grinley when I stopped by the store, and he confirmed that some Kumlien's do have dark eyes. So, that would be where I'd cast my vote." - Linda Ferraresso
• "For those of you who have all your old "Birding" magazines, there is a great discussion on plumage variations in "Kumlien's" Iceland Gull from the October, 1991 issue written by Kevin Zimmer. A couple of facinating points that the author made are as follows:
  • "kumlieni and thayeri are now reported to interbreed"
  • "It is increasingly clear that L. g. glaucoides, L. g. kumlieni, L.thayeri approximate a cline of increasing pigmentation from east to west, in spite of the disjunct breeding range of the glaucoides with respect to the other two forms....there appears to be no clean break in any of the morphological characters that might be used to distinguish these forms in the field"
  • The nominate subspecies L. g. glaucoides "status in North America is supported by only a few specimens (mostly from northeastern Canada), and some of these are disputed." [in other words we probably ONLY see kumlien's gull in North America!]
  • "A small percentage (less than 20%, possibly much lower than that) of Iceland Gulls do indeed have brown eyes as adults"
  • "contrary to statements by Grant (1986), the primary pattern in kumlieni in Definitive Basic is extremely variable....a very few birds (possibly intergrades) seem to have genuinely blackish primaries of a shade that is not noticeably different from that in Thayer's"
  • "Iceland Gulls of the subspecies L. g. kumlieni ehibit considerable variation in most characters generally considered important to field identification" - Steve Mirick
• "Friends--On the basis of my limited experience with Thayer's, I'd have to argue against the 1/30 bird from N'Port. Thayer's is not a white-winged gull. The wingtips should be saturated black, not simply very dark gray approaching black. Kevin Phillips' ..Birding.. article illustrates this. The gray tone of the wingtips in Kumlien's is, as he and others report, very highly variable, as previous correspondents have noted. But I know of no authority stating that the wingtips are jet black. Eye color is indicative but notoriously unreliable, as has been said. A dark eye doesn't mean you have a Thayer's. Again in my limited experience with Thayer's, I would say that the distribution of black, white and gray in the outer primaries is very distinctive. And the the distribution shows up in folded wing. Compare the winter adult primaries closest to the tertials on the standing adults in Nat Geo on page 204. The difference is quite striking, whatever the depth of color saturation. Full adult late winter (eastern) Thayer's is a strikingly beautiful bird (as is full adult winter Iceland). When you get one, you will know you have one. Enjoy. On Kumlien's vs. nominate Iceland: Zimmer's article is 10 years old. We've learned a lot and we're continuing to learn a lot. I think we may be getting close to a reliably speculative approach to separating Kumlien's and nominate." - Jim Barton
• "Having looked at my references tonight, I agree that it is most likely Kumlien's based primarily on the very light color in the primaries. Steve Mirick's post tonight raises interesting questions, but I still favor Kumlien's." - Steve Moore