Today, on my usual lunch hour walk to the Central Park Reservoir I found what I believe is a 1st cycle Mew/Common Gull. This individual is a Ring-billed sized bird that is heavily marked all around the head. Notable were the dusky brown markings concentrated around the eyes, the relatively fine tipped poorly contrasted blackish and dull flesh/pink bill, and the brown tertials and primaries. It also stuck out looking exceptionally "retarded" in it's molt cycle as compared to the other 1st cycle Ring-billed Gulls at this date. They all showed variably concurrent plumage aspects and all showed well defined black tipped bills with contrasting pink bases. I managed to take some descent digi-binned images using my phone. As I don't have a photo sharing account myself, I have forwarded the best images to Anders Peltomaa and Jacob Drucker to post to their photo pages in order to encourage scrutiny by the birding community. I welcome a critical discussion about this bird wether it's is a Common Gull or an aberrantly plumages Ring-billed. As of 1pm this afternoon the bird remained on the causeway on the N. end of the Central Park Reservoir. If still there, it is best to enter the park via 5th avenue or Central Park West and 96th St. It was best viewed just W. of the pump house from the jogging path.
Good luck, Nadir Souirgi -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
