smithsonianus

Interesting looking gull showing American Herring Gull features in the field opposite the Red Lion, Upper Poppleton this afternoon between 14:50-14:54 before flying off back towards the tip/to roost.

-Obviously paler head still with plenty of darker streaking in the head area but with very heavy streaking in the neck area creating an very obvious shawl

-Two toned bill with darker tip and paler base

-very dark uniform dark underparts

-dark bases to the greater coverts with increasing darkness towards outer coverts

-largely dark tertials with reduced white notching restriced to the tip

-uniformly smokey axilliaries with no hint of pale markings on the feathers

-dark secondary bar

-some retained juvenile scapulars

-large robust structure

To be totally honest the bird stretched its tail almost as soon as I got onto it and it appeared to be very dark, however as I wasn't really concentrating fully having only just got onto the bird I wouldn't like to 100% say that it had an all dark tail but it would appear that way.

The nigling features on the bird are the undertail coverts which don't appear to be very heavily barred, although the photos are over exposed due to looking into the light but it did appear that way in the field, although better views of under/uppertail coverts and tail would be nice!