I have to say, this has been quite an odd year on the birding front. First half of the year was absolutely incredible thanks to a very productive January spent in our adopted state of Texas and then later in March/April out to new locations in southeast Arizona. If you are looking for recommendations to get into or looking to expand your birding horizons, those two states would be my go to recommendations – not to discourage or disparage other locations, but if you want to fill your counts and have a good chance of seeing rarities, then to the southern border you shall go. That first half netted me around 391 checks for the year, then the legs were kicked out – literally. You are not going to get a lot of birds staring out your den window month after month. Although already at a record for me with the 391 mark, the incredible 400 threshold has been so close…for so long. Well, we are going to try and correct that over the Thanksgiving holiday and head back out into the field. To increase our options, we are heading to the southeast where there are currently 27 potential checks. All I need is a third of those- wish us luck! Before I forget, we did release our latest Halloween prop tutorial – I’ll put that at the end in case you are interested.
Okay, we know why you are here, let’s get to it. Today I thought I would feature a feathered friend that has traditionally been a difficult find – not show much on the rarity front, rather the identification front.
Now you know why the issue is in the “identification” phase. The Gull family is an absolute nightmare thanks to their nearly impossible plumage variations during the early years and then the mature feathering that can look very similar from species to species. Hit the jump if you want to try your hand at this particular specimen.
All ID tasks start by understanding your location and the options available in that particular spot/region. This particular specimen was found at the dike at Texas City, Texas in January of 2024.
Yes, the exact same location as my last post on the gorging Great Blue Heron. Feel free to take a look back at that post if you want more information on that particular spot. Today I mainly want to focus on the Gull as this bastard, I mean bird, caused a lot of virtual page flipping in the bird reference(s) source(s). Granted, this region doesn’t lend itself to an easy ID as there are a crap load of Gulls down there and no small set of variety. Linda and I were specifically there to find this particular Gull – like trying to find one rarity Gull at the Brownsville dump, it wasn’t going to be easy. For the record, it is a rite of passage for birders to go to the Brownsville, TX dump – to quote one of my favorite movies on this spot: “This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this” – I digress.
I will pause here and let you test your birding IQ and take a shot at what this Gull is? {as Jeopardy theme plays in the background}. You assuredly appreciate that this specimen is still sporting its adult plumage – nonbreeding and/or first few winters would just be cruel and unusual punishment hehehe. Do you think you have it…did you go for a full daily double?
Now we know what region it was spotted in. We know it is in the breeding adult plumage, so let’s focus in on the feathering. The easy characteristics that jump out are the black hood, bold, split white eye ring, dark/reddish bill and dark legs/feet. You probably noticed the pink hue on the chest, but let’s put that aside for now.
The dark hood tends to narrow the options down. For our consideration, let’s pare the list down to the Laughing Gull, Franklin’s Gull and Bonaparte’s Gull. There are others like the Little, Black-Headed, Sabine’s and Mediterranean along with varying degrees of “smudge heads” which would be true rarities, but I’ll just save you some time there.
Now let’s dig a little deeper. Bonaparte’s is a good choice. Region is right for their nonbreeding months, but they have some easy tells. The first is they red legs, a more Tern like bill (slender) and although they do have white eye crescents, they are relatively thin. Not a good match to this specimen, so that brings us quickly down to two.
Let’s explore the likely choice between the Laughing and the Franklin’s which is the former. Side by side, these two species are incredibly close. Hooded, dark legs, dark reddish bill and similarly thick white eye rings. If you are familiar with the southeast coast then you are well aware of the abundance of the Laughers along the coast – non-scientific observation, they are EVERYWHERE. Most of those are non-migratory, but there are populations especially in the northeast that migrate down into the lower Americas. Regional maps on the Franklin’s are a bit deceiving. At fast viewing, it appears they are migratory only from well north and then down to the west coast of South America. I know for a fact they can be found in south Texas and that is validated when you switch to Cornell’s Sightings Map. Personally, I think it is time for the birding community to review ALL region maps.
For simplicity, region maps are not going to disqualify one or the other. There are two distinguishing features that I place in the “relative” column. Unlike some of the characteristics, you do not need to be holding them in your hands (looking at you Ring-Necked Ducks!), however, you really need to have them side by side to determine the nuances.
Translated…usually not helpful in the field unless you stuffed some comparison samples in your backpack before you went out in the field. Those two tells happen to be the overall size as Laughers are larger and the other is they have a droopy bill. Honestly, that last one I have NEVER been able to detect. There is, however, one feature I always use to distinguish the two Gull species and that is by looking at the folded wingtips. Franklin’s will have large white spots at the tips and the Laughers are practically black save for a few small ticks. I do have one seriously craptastic shot above that show the two species – did you guess right on your Jeopardy answer?
The shot above also shows the futility of the other two characteristics. Although soft you can see the sizing is skewed by the relative positioning as the Franklin’s appears relatively larger and maybe your eyes are better on the droopy bill scam.
To help visualize the tail differences, here is a better shot of a Laugher couple I took a few days earlier – see how dark those wingtips are compared to the very white ones in the shots earlier in this post?
After hunting the entire length of the Texas City Dike and taking countless photos of Laughers to zoom in on their tails, we finally found a single Franklin’s!
About now you are asking yourself (hedged by the title), what’s up with the pinkish hue on the Franklin’s, that seems to be a very easy distinguisher. Good question, does anybody have the answer to that? Really, not kidding, can anyone help me out on that as I have struggled to find a definitive response. A search on Cornell’s website provides zero comment on it, yet, ironically, their very first picture on their ID page shows a similar pink hue. I have never seen this in a Laughing Gull or a Bonaparte’s out in the field and neither of their Cornell pages depict it. A quick look at Audubon’s Franklin’s page yields nothing – and it never does on anything so no surprise there as they spend more time projecting bogus climate maps than actually giving you anything useful (Bri’s personal commentary).
Wait, wait, hold the presses. I just checked eBird’s site as I wanted to try two last sources before I left you with an unanswered tidbit. eBird comes through and does mention that Franklin’s “white underparts are often tinged with pink”. Now we are getting somewhere. Time to break out the Gulls Simplified book which happens to have the worst name for any bird book I have ever used – simplified …riiiiighhht. I always have a bottle of Tylenol nearby whenever I open that book and admittedly dread having to drag it off my shelf. Good news, we have ourselves a winner – in the Adult Breeding section they do state “White underparts are often blushed with pink”. Learning on the fly here folks! That seems like a much easier way to distinguish them assuming you find a breeding adult – sure beats sneaking up on one, leaping on it, wrestling it to the ground, kneeing on the wings while pinning its head to the sand so you can take a ruler out and see if the bill droops….pure conjecture there folks, nothing to see here.
I feel a bit cantankerous in this post as I read it back through. Gulls have a bad habit of getting me in this state ha. One final observation with regards to Cornell before I show you the latest prop tutorial… and yes, I’ve made it several times in the past. I started my analysis with the Bonaparte’s Gull as my first guess. Their compare with similar species does not include the Laughing or the Franklin’s Gull. From there I manually bring up the Laughing Gull page and it has both the Franklin’s and the Bonaparte’s as compare options. Out of curiosity, I then go to the Franklin’s page and sure enough, it has both the Laugher and the Bonaparte’s. So frustrating to not have consistent references and it seems to happen way more than it should. I appreciate the linked approach over paging through books, but you start losing confidence in the source the more times this happens. Sometimes you just need to let it all out – I feel so much better now hehehe.
We have finally come to the end and as promised, here is a link to our latest prop tutorial video – this one focuses on our Illuminated Tombstones. We have featured these on our Haunted Trail recaps and decided we would take you behind the scenes and show you how it is done. (Here is the direct link if the embedding does not work on your browser – link here).
Happy haunting everyone!
Life Intrigued 