[All photographs copyright, Gary Nunn 2013] – There seems to be a deficiency of interesting gulls this winter along the coast of San Diego County. So when I spotted a large pale gull near the entry causeway to Fiesta Island, Mission Bay I quickly investigated! The gull was quite difficult to approach until a jetski passed nearby and happened to kill a fish just beneath the water surface. The floating fish body parts came alongside the shoreline and soon attracted this large-in-size second-cycle Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens into photographic range. It aggressively chased off nearby Western Gulls and soon had the fish remains to itself while dominantly guarding the area near the shore.
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
This gull is chesty and short bodied looking, typical for this species, with wings at rest hardly much longer than the tail by only a few primary feather tips. The off-center, forward-weighted look is quite prominent when it swims and even quite odd looking when seen from the side alighting. Several views also show well the broad width of the wings, in particular the secondaries, that help create the skirted looking effect known well in this species. Although the legs are quite dark looking there is an underlying pink color becoming evident.
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
This gull has a nice looking dark cappucino-brown colored iris, but the dark greyish eyering appears to have no other notable coloration developed so far as I could discern from the photographs. The strong looking dark bill has quite a pronounced gonydeal angle with some pale coloration at the base of both the upper and lower mandible (patchy). It also has a fine light-colored tip to the upper mandible.
Glaucous-winged Gull second-cycle, Mission Bay, San Diego 17 Feb 2013
Good Morning Gary,
I am a new fan of your website and would love to explore more of it and be able to go back to posts I like. Is there an archive or a list of your entries so that I might be able to go back to where I left off without haveing to click “older posts” a million times?
I am a new fan of photographing birds and you are a huge inspiration. I too am in the San Diego area and I would love to be able to reference your material when looking for inspiration for places to visit and birds to find.
Thank you,
Amanda Libby
Hi Amanda, check over in the right hand sidebar on my blog and you can read Posts by Month. It is the only way I know to keep track! Glad to hear you are developing bird photography – a fun pursuit! Gary.
Hi! I don’t know if you remember, but I was there with you photographing this individual. I looked at my photos more carefully now and became unsure of the identification of this gull. Could you, being more familiar with these, tell how you distinguish this from a glaucescens x occidentalis hybrid? The tail looks a bit dark for a typical Glaucous-winged, at least according to my gull identification literature.
Kim Kuntze
Finland