A couple of Beddington gulls

 A couple of presumed Yellow-legged Gulls from Beddington this week. More on Yellow-legged Gulls that have featured on this blog HERE. 

I also did some scoring of recent Caspian Gulls at Beddington using British Birds scoring system HERE. The non-classic first winter that has been around for a while HERE came out with a score of 21- just on the line of an acceptable Caspian. Interestingly as I was scoring the bird and going through the paper it was interesting to confirm that the dark mask and head and body streaking and the dark triangles in the scapulars were at the variation limit of pure Caspian, and not necessarily indicative of hybridisation although the bird was right on the line. 

A presumed first-winter Yellow-legged Gull, seems to be a lot of pale in the inner primaries and there are even lozenges on the outer webs of the inner primaries (photo below) which are not typical for Yellow-legged Gull. Also the scapular and mantle pattern is quite lightly marked. Presumably all within variation of first-winter Yellow-legged Gull.  Here's GRO's January first-winter Yellow-legged Gulls, showing some of the variation within the inner primary window  HERE

Presumed first-winter Yellow-legged Gull (left and below) and first-winter Herring Gull (right) 

Another Yellow-legged Gull candidate, a second-winter bird