Monday, October 30, 2006

Ring-billed Gull


A lot can be added to a person's knowledge of identifying character- istics of birds at their various life stages through studying details in photos. A good example of this is the comparision of details from a couple of photos that I had taken on the weekend of a 1st winter Ring-billed Gull and an adult nonbreeding Ring-billed Gull. Noting the difference in leg colour of these two gulls; the younger gull shown above has pink legs and the adult to the right has yellow ones. The ring positioning on the bill also is different. The black ring on the 1st winter gull's bill extends to the tip while the mature bird's shows the ring further up on the bill. The bill colour is different too; the younger gull's bill is pink and the adults is yellow.
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