nominate Lesser Black-backed Gull (L. f. fuscus)

(last update: 1-1-2010)

(3 images) Larus fuscus intermedius 5+cy J005 October 15 2008, Westkapelle, the Netherlands. Pictures Pim Wolf.

J005 was ringed in northern Norway . The exact location for J005; Husholmen Froholman, Bjarkøy, Troms, Norway 69°03'11"N 016°20'00"E. This colony only holds both pale-mantled birds and pure fuscus-type birds, in about 50%-50% proportions.

Pim comments: "J005 was ringed as a 5cy+ intermedius on Bjarkøy, Troms and seen by me at Westkapelle on 15 October 2008. From the ringing details on http://www.ringmerking.no it was not clear if this bird was caught on a nest or on a rubbish tip but the ringing date of 20 June surely does suggest a breeding bird (and this was later confirmed by Nils Helge Lorenzen).
In the field this bird was not suspected to be anything but an intermedius, both it's build and the dark grey back/wings fitted nicely with what I would expect from an intermedius. Looking at the moult of this bird things start to shift a little; p1-2 fresh, p3 dropped or growing, p4-10 old. A moult schedule more in line with fuscus I would guess. As it turned out I took some record shots of this bird and I've included slightly edited versions of these below. If I interpret my own pictures correctly this is a surprisingly late moulting bird, but it's probably very normal for a bird that has to migrate 2064 km in a straight line to get to Westkapelle."

More information about migration strategies in Norwegian fuscus and the ringing programme in the three northern counties of Norway: Nordland, Troms and Finnmark, can be found here: The summary for juveniles can be found in the fuscus 1cy October section, the summary for adults can be found in the fuscus adult October section.
Morten Helberg, Geir Systad, Ingve Birkeland, Nils Lorentzen & Jan Bustnes published an article about this research in Ardea 97, 2009, titled: Migration patterns of adult and juvenile Lesser Black-backed Gulls Larus fuscus from northern Norway. The complete PDF can be found HERE.