Herring Gull? Northern CA (Petaluma) this week (1 Viewer)

[MelospizaMelodiaFan]

Herring gull is the best I can come up with based on the large body, non-bulbous beak, yellow feet, light eyes, and black wingtips.
Can someone confirm or offer an alternative?
Thank you!

 

[Butty]

yellow feet

Pink.

 

[rkj]

Looks ok to me, but let us hope someone with more knowledge of these birds will offer an opinion. The smudgy dark head ( along with the bill shape) eliminates Western Gull.

 

[MelospizaMelodiaFan]

Pink.

Yes, thanks for catching that!

 

[lou salomon]

Primary pattern looks perfect for western type smithsonianus, being black rather than dark gray (which would make it a 'Cook-Inlet-Gull'), with a solid p5 mark and a small p10 mirror. But I wondered about the rather plain head markings (rather than streaky) as a possible indication of Glaucous-winged involvement. All in all this basically is an American Herring Gull, maybe with small amounts of GLWG ancestry but I wouldn't hesitate to put it as Herring Gull on ebird etc.

 

[MelospizaMelodiaFan]

Primary pattern looks perfect for western type smithsonianus, being black rather than dark gray (which would make it a 'Cook-Inlet-Gull'), with a solid p5 mark and a small p10 mirror. But I wondered about the rather plain head markings (rather than streaky) as a possible indication of Glaucous-winged involvement. All in all this basically is an American Herring Gull, maybe with small amounts of GLWG ancestry but I wouldn't hesitate to put it as Herring Gull on ebird etc.

You explained it better than I could. There was just something off about this bird that made me hesitant to confidently ID it.