Iceland Gull

Since 2010, every winter I have been photographing a visitor that hangs around Plymouth Harbor in the parking lot behind East Bay Grill. The question is is this the same bird coming back every winter or are they different birds? In fact, this year they are two different birds present, each with different plumage's.

What bird is it, it is an Iceland Gull (Larus glaucoides). The reason it likes the parking lot, is that people come and feed the pigeons and gulls that are present there and the Iceland gull also is a scavenger and does enjoy free food.

Iceland gulls breed in the Arctic regions of Canada and Greenland and migrates, wintering from in the North Atlantic southward to the British Isles and the northernmost states of eastern United States, into the interior of North America as far west as the western Great Lakes.

For me, the hardest part is to decide whether this is a strictly Iceland gull or the Kumlien's subspecies. Some of the experts feel if the bird is in the eastern United States it is the Kumlien's. It still is a pretty bird to observe and photograph.