Winter Gulls - Lesser Black-backed and Iceland/Kumlien Gulls

There are some birds that only come to New England in the winter, among them the Lesser Black-backed Gull from N.W. Europe and the northern Atlantic, and the Iceland/Kumlien Gull from northern Canada. The Lesser Black-backed Gull  reportedly first bred in Iceland in the late 1920's and has been breeding in Greenland since 1990. There is no record of breeding in N. America, but since 1980 there has been a dramatic increase of nonbreeding individuals in the fall and winter. They have become fairly common along the Atlantic coast and the shores of the Great Lakes, but are uncommon further inland.

They do appear however to be fairly regular winter visitors to the CT River area near Gill and Turner's  Falls in MA. Following a recent report of a sighting I was happy to find the gull there in a mixed group roosting on the ice.

What distinguishes them from other gulls are gray upper parts, yellowish legs, head and neck streaking, and a medium size bill that is slender and often tapered. They are much smaller than the Great Black-backed Gull and also smaller than the Herring Gull, standing behind it in this photo. The two gulls in front are Ring-billed Gulls. 

This photo of a LBBG among a flock of Herring Gulls was taken in the same area in the winter of 2008.

The other fairly uncommon winter visitor is the Kumlien Gull
, a subspecies of the Iceland Gull. In fact all the Iceland Gulls in N. America reportedly belong to the Kumlien taxon. it is named after a Swedish-American naturalist named Thure Kumlien. The finer points of this distinction in plumage elude me, but the Kumlien Gull breeds in northern Canada and the Iceland Gull proper in Greenland. Most of the visiting Kumlien Gulls in this area are first or second cycle individuals.  In a large flock of roosting Herring and Ring-billed Gulls you can usually find one or two. I took these photos in late December 2010 and 2009, in the same area on the CT River and the Montague Power Canal in Turner's Falls.

In this year's Kumlien Gull, shown here in front of a Herring Gull. note the fresh gray upperparts indicating a second cycle individual. The bicolored bill confims this. The first cycle gulls in the photos below have a uniformly dark bill.

Also on my recent visit there I was fortunate enough to I observe two Ring-billed Gulls practicing synchronized swimming.

And here's a Herring Gull admiring her mirror image. Oops --sorry, it's upside down! :-)

Cheers and Happy Birding!

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Information based on Howell's and Dunn's "Gulls of the Americas"  and on articles in Wikipedia.org. Strangely Cornell's Birds of North America had no listing for the Lesser Black-backed Gull.