These shots were asked for by Tim (you have PM).
They're the only other shots I have of the large juvenile gull that appeared at about 6am yesterday at the Flashes. They were previously discarded and not used on the grounds of them being bo77ocks!
Thanks for posting further photos of this interesting 2cy (1w/1s) gull.
First off it caught my eye from the first photo on account of, rather grey and pale mantle, scapulars, lesser and median coverts, a pale trailing edge to the greater coverts, uniform secondaries and tertials and a pale and sleek head shape. These features point towards Caspian Gull.
I would say it is probably not a Yellow-legged Gull due to the obviously pale innner webs shown on p4-6 (could be the light though)
The tail shows a dark terminal band but quite a bit of dark above this, which seems too dark for it to be a Caspian Gull, which I why I requested more photos.
From the further photos added, some give a Great Black-backed Gull impression, however I think we can rule that out on account of the amount of dark in the tail band.
Further features that can be seen in these additional photos are an obvious pale bar along the median coverts, this would suggest 2nd generation median coverts which would support its Caspian credentials, an overall long winged and at times Common Gull feel (first and second photos).
Also although closed in most of the photos, the tail seems to show very white bases to the tail feathers and white upper tail coverts.
In the 4th photo it appears to show a dark underwing, but I would suggest that this is to do with the lighting in this photo.
In my opinion this bird is showing some strong features of a 2cy Caspian Gull but I wouldn't like to safely rule out Herring Gull!
If anyone else took any photos of a large immature gull yesterday it would be useful to post them up, or keep an eye out for it today.
Hope that wasn't too boring, much more interesting than a large white heron! 8-P
