The Lincolnshire Bird Club

The two Icelandic/Kumliens photos posted this evening by Paul Sullivan show the bird that he and I watched today in the Boston Tip area, This bird, unlike the individual which Paul refers to as 'bird 2' and which I also saw, is a much more credible 2w/3cy Kumliens. The primaries clearly show the requisite dark outer webs bordered by a thin white edge.The mantle and median coverts are moulting to grey and the tail feathers are reasonably dark. The eye colour is still quite dark.The bird was present for about 15 mins both on the water and on the bank. We failed to see it fly away!!
Paul has also posted a photo of an interesting adult alternate YL Herring Gull which was around for an hour or so showing pink/yellow legs, a Herring Gull eye colour and a relatively small parallel bill with the red spot only on the lower mandible. The primary pattern, mantle colour and eye ring are classic YLHG. This bird frequently called together with a Herring Gull.
There was also an adult Med Gull present with head moult well advanced into alternate plumage.
All comments on these plumages are most wellcome.

and a darkish 2cy Iceland from Grimsby (the third or 4th bird there this week) -- from the mass of photos on the Faeroes blog will the gulling community be reviewing what and if Iceland and Kumlien's Gulls are / maybe -- it seems to have opened up a whole new spectrum of plumages
http://pewit.blogspot.com/2012/02/iceland-gull-2cy.html

Hi Graham

Have you, and other Lincs Gull enthusiast seen this interesting link, taken off Lee Evans UK400 blog.

Its a North American scientist who has developed a scoring system based on a number of different plumage features to determine the split between Iceland/Kumliens/Thayers

http://www.tertial.us/gulls/tkg.htm

Thanks for the link Phil most interesting but only refers to first-winter birds -- hopefully he will expand it to other ages; on the basis of these photos and descriptions I have scored the first-winter 2cy bird at Grimsby and it comes out as follows:

Primaries 2
Secondaries 2
Tertials 3
Tail 3 bordering on 4
Scapulars coverts 2 but probably closer to 3
Bill colour 1
Head bill shape 2

Total 15 to 17 putting it pretty firmly in the Kumlien's camp according to this analysis -- I have placed photos in the album to illustrate the points above

Graham - regarding your 2cy kumliens - It's interesting to see how bicolored the bill is at such a young age. Shows the benefits of photos because if I had seen that bird briefly in the field, say a flyby, I might have ID'd it as a 3cy.