Juvenile YLG

8th July - in my haste to post my Greenshank year tick, I forgot to post some sightings from Tuesday 8th. On arrival, I was pleased to see a couple of Green Sands, a Common Sand and the family party of 3 LRPs on the west shore of the spit.

Most birds on the spit seemed edgy and flighty and I soon discovered why, as a family group of 4 foxes appeared through the vegetation.  Although they spent most of their time play fighting, they did wander over most of the spit and consequently the Green Sands didn't stay too long.  I decided to return later in the day.

In the afternoon, I found my first juvenile LWHG of the season.  This is quite an early date for locally bred gulls - I don't normally see juvenile Herring and LBBG until mid July, so I suspected that it might be a juvenile Yellow-legged Gull, which breed earlier than our birds.  I find these a bit tricky to separate from some juvenile LBBG, but it appeared to show all the necessary plumage and structural features to confirm it as this species.  I took quite a few record shots to illustrate this:

This shot is over exposed, but it does show the black tail band and extent of white in the tail with just a few dark marks in it:

Structurally, it is a much stronger and sturdier looking bird than LBBG, with quite a large bill, though not as large as some.  It also shows the brown rather than black/greyish tone to the plumage and a more white undertone to the head and neck. Here you can see that the dark marks on the undertail coverts are largely restricted to the sides.  The Greater Coverts are also solidly dark based, but become more barred on the inner GCs:

This shows the stronger structure quite well and the sturdy bill. Note the white undertone to the head and neck with darker streaking around the eye:

Another shot showing the Greater Coverts nicely:

I haven't mentioned the tertials yet, but here you can see that they are dark centred with pale fringing that doesn't reach the mantle.  The fringing is slightly notched, but nowhere near as much as in Herring Gull.  This picture also shows the dark anchor mark at the end of the tertials created by the pale tone towards the tip:

Unfortunately I didn't see the open wing, but was happy with the identification from what I had seen.

The regular adult YLG was also present, as now were 7 LRP, 4 adults and 3 juvs (I only saw 1 juv last year, so 3 birds are nice to see). 2 Oystercatchers completed the waders, whilst 3 Teal, a male Pochard and a Little Grebe were also noteworthy.