Large white headed Gull ID

[AKinghorn]

Hi all,

Today I was at Seaton Common tip scanning the gulls for a good 4 hours or so. I had a successfull day with LBBGull, Glaucous, Yellow-legged, and Iceland Gull being the highlights. However there was one gull I was not able to ID during the short time I watched it.

I have a suspicion the bird is either:
1- Lesser black-backed Gull with quite a light mantle shade.
2 -Yellow-legged Gull with quite a dark mantle shade.

Features noticed in the field:
- Faint yellowish hue to the legs and the legs were fairly short
- Mantle shade darker than surrounding argenteus but seemed to dark for argentatus. I had seen Lesser black-backed Gull and its mantle shade as expected was darker than this bird.
- Averaged about the same size as surrounding Herring Gulls.

I have attached here an image of 3 video stills.

Here are three videos, the videos are best views in full screen mode and in highest quality. If you click the bit on the video bar that says "360p" an option will appear for "720p HD", click on that for HQ quality.

First short video: http://www.youtube.com/user/FoghornsBirdingVideo#p/a/u/0/z1i9fi-kSho

Second short video: http://www.youtube.com/user/FoghornsBirdingVideo#p/a/u/2/iFmM7vTNhVg

Last video showing bird taking off: http://www.youtube.com/user/FoghornsBirdingVideo#p/a/u/1/_h1x0w_XP6Y

Look forward to replies.

[AKinghorn]

I have done my research and come to the conclusion the bird is in fact a Yellow-legged Gull.

[AKinghorn]

Thanks to other keen Gull watchers my gull has been re ID-d as a Herring x Lesser black-backed Gull hybrid.

Even rarer than Yellow-legged Gull, but glad I saw the real deal before I saw this bird the other week.

Cheers,