American Herring Gull - Blast From The Past Finds
American Herring Gull is another true birder's bird. I wasn't always into large gulls. I hadn't, for example, run and twitched any species of large gull in my days in Ireland, and indeed, the only reason I had seen American Herring Gull at all was seeing the long staying bird at Nimmo's pier whilst going for other, better species. However, as I focused more on more on my own self found list I decided to make more of an effort to pull self found birds out of the pool that is large gulls. I've found a few over the years at this point, so here's a couple of my favorites. Things came to a head when, birding in the dump in Youghal in 2010, I was confronted with a bird that could only be an American Herring Gull . A 1st Winter bird, with classic tail, rump, undertail covs and underparts, nonetheless, at the time I did not call it. (I count it now). I went away, put the reading and research time in, but in subsequent visits, did not relocate it. I carried on, worki...
