Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 07:03:09 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: rick Subject: Re: ring billed?? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" SEAN MCCANDLESS wrote: >I was in North East Plaza, at the acme today. In Cecil Co. . There was a >flock of ring billed gulls. This one gull stood out to me becouse it didnt >have a ring around the bill. Well, It seem to be the same size as the other >ring billed gulls the bill seemed to be the same shape and size also. Just >no ring. The head did seem a bit smaller but that was it . Even the >streaking on the back of the head was the same. > Can someone help me??? Does this happen to ring billed gulls, sometimes? I >have never seen this befofe in my 20 or so years of birding. It is a rare variation but it does exist. I have seen eight Ring-billeds over the years that had little or no ring on the bill and Paul Lehman and I photographed on at Loch Raven and he used the pix in Birding. If the bird was in every other way a RB, then the lack of ring should be treated as just another of those wonderful variations that make gulls the treat they are... Rick The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. -- Bertrand Russell Rick Blom rblom@blazie.com 4318 Cowan Place Belcamp, Maryland 21017 (410)575-6086 Editor: BWD Skimmer (www.birdwatchersdigest.com) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================