You want happy ending?!

You got happy ending! Got a text from Ross Wood that he had my "mystery gull" fly past the lakeland centre at Van Wagner's yesterday...

I was excited, but also had to get to a turkey dinner...

Then I got another set of texts that the bird flew past again! Both Ross and Barb (wire) Charlton got looks at the bird and (although not great) - agreed it's kind of a messed up bird...What was I to do?

Instead of arriving at my parents house and leaving with them, I simply grabbed my Dads point and shoot camera and drove to the lake. I had two bags of stinky bread in my trunk and I was going to throw it all out in 15 minutes to see if I could draw the bird back towards the Lakeland Centre....


And it worked...

The skinny? It looked like a Lesser Black-backed Gull... In fact, it looked rather obviously LBBG-like at times (once at close range and with other gulls nearby to help compare to)... So much so that (I think) both Ross, Barb and myself all seriously wondered if we had the "two bird" theory happening because of the differences in size/shape we may have been seeing. 

With that said... 

I was rather satisfied that it wasn't a Kelp Gull at the very least, and decided to hightail it away to the family turkey dinner... I had some photos (pretty darn good for a point and shoot, I must say) and could look more closely later...

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Upon returning home - I looked at the above pics, and can't help but wonder if it isn't a "pure" Lesser Black-backed Gull... I feel like a juvenile Herring X Lesser Black-backed Gull hybrid might look something like this - and would account for the abnormal shape as well as some plumage traits...

Perhaps I'll post more details about it later, but for now I though I'd just update that I DID get some pics and NO it's probably not a Kelp Gull - which is all fine and dandy with me (I'm just happy to get a good look and photos of anything unusual)... Can you just imagine what it would be like if it WAS actually a Kelp Gull but I didn't tell anyone?