1cy Herring x Caspian hybrid

Yesterday I visited Simrishamn, a great place for gulling in Sweden. Except for four Yellow-legged Gulls I also saw a Herring x Caspian Gull hybrid. I initially saw it in the binoculars with its wings up and I thought "nice, a young Caspian Gull!".

Here, the pale underwing that got me thinking of Caspian is visible. The pale window at inner primaries fits Herring better than Caspian.

After scoping it I found out all the upperparts including tertials were of Herring type.

Still, the

bird's shape was all Caspian Gull as well as its face.

Herring x Glaucous hybrid?

Update: Press here to see a movie of the bird.

On the first of February I saw the strange 2cy gull again. It gave an entirely different impression than last time (when I didn't have any other gull close by and it dissappeared shortly after I spotted it). The wing was "medium long" with the distance tertial tip - tail tip the same as tip of tail - tip of longest primary. The bird was a bit smaller than the Herring Gulls and appeared quite cute. The body was very homogeneous in colour with a slight red hue. The bill was dark with a hint of pink from the base to the nostrils on upper mandible and a little less on the lower one.

When flying, the darkest parts of the wing were outer primaries and the secondaries. Around three outer primaries were quite dark but then the primaries lightened up quickly inwards with just faint dark markings on the tips. The inner primaries looked almost completely light. I haven't seen the underwing exept for the axillaries once, they looked quite dark and evenly coloured.

As you can see in the last image the tail has a broad black bar that remains broad far towards the sides. In the image when the bird is raising the wings you can see that the black doesn't cover the outer rectrices all the way in. You can also see that the rump is quite dark and barred.

The eye is black looking.

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Glaucous x Herring Gull hybrid?

Yesterday when I searched through the Herring Gulls on the rubbish dump of Köping my eyes got stuck on a first winter gull. Seen from the front it was even coloured in a lighter shade than young Herring Gulls of the same stage. The bill was as dark as in Herring Gull with a hint of pink from the base to the nostrils. When it turned around and the primaries were shown I started thinking of a possible hybrid Glaucous x Herring Gull. They were not as dark as that of a normal Herring Gull and had quite broad light brown edges. Very much like the ones of the following gull, photographed by Chris Gibbins in Scotland this winter. Press here to see the image.

In the evening Hans Larsson noticed the light eyelids on the images, normally shown by Glaucous Gull.

The wing coverts had a lot of off-white markings and the scapulars weren't contrasting against the wing coverts. I don't know wether some were moulted or not. In the image to the left a few scapulars look moulted, but it's hard to tell. Sadly, I never managed to remember the appearance of the tertials and sadly the bird quickly dissapeared. From what I could see the bird had a tail-bar resembling that of a Herring Gull.

I can add that I saw a light gull in flight maybe ten minutes before I saw this one on the ground. It's quite possible it was the same gull. My impression of the gull in flight was someting like this presumed Herring x Glaucous hybrid (except for the red hue), press here.
By that I mean a light and diffuse appearance. But again, I'm not sure it was the same gull.

What suggest a hybrid on the standing bird is the pattern of the primaries, the even body colour and the very clear light eyelids.

Maybe you have experience of this kind of hybrids or just some thoughts? Write a comment!