Also attached is a photo I took of one of the birds last March, it appears to have a smudge of black on the right P9 very similar to that in Mark's photos from today. Would love to know if these marks are genetic and there like a fingerprint each year or whether they can vary from year to year.
There are a few photos of previous birds available on Iris http://www.birdguides.com/iris/pictures.asp?mode=advanced&tx=672&sn=cardiff&rty=0&r=1&st=1&gallery=0&v=0 unfortunately as the images are only 640 pixels it's a bit difficult to get much detail on them. To me the photos of the 2009 and 2012 birds look remarkably similar to the bird Andy and I photographed this year and those of the 2010 like the bird in Mark's photos and mine and Jim Almond's from last March.
Interesting stuff, going to have to spend a bit of time down there and see if I can get some more photos!
Peter
and the bird from last March:
1 comment:
Great stuff Peter much appreciated. Jeff Slocombe sent me some interesting images of Peter Lansdown's Ogmore Bonaparte's Gull from Jan 2013, which seems to show that only one of it's wings has a distinctive P9 dark mark.
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