In this post, I discuss the presence of hybrids European Herring x Lesser-black Backed Gulls (the Guilvinec Gull) in Brittany, France, and describe their identification, showing a commented gallery that includes ten different individuals of this interesting hybrid gulls. The main identification features and separation from similar looking taxa are also included.

Greenland Dunlin is an endangered and quite unknown taxon that breeds in N Greenland and migrates to N Africa. In May 2022 there was a remarkable influx of Greenland Dunlins in N Spain, that allowed us to study this taxon in detail. This post deals with its identification in breeding plumage, describing the key plumage features separating Greenland and European Dunlins, and showing many examples of typical arctica as well as some birds of disputed identity.

The identification of Little and Least Terns is usually considered extremely difficult, especially so in first calendar year birds. In this post we describe the upperwing pattern of Least Tern in juvenile plumage as a very useful character to easily separate both species. The head pattern is also an important character of use when separating this species-pair. The identification of the first 1cy Least Tern found in Europe, a bird seen in September, 2019 in N Spain, is discussed applying these criteria.

As a follow-up of the Siberian Black Kites post, we show some pictures of a presumed hybrid Red x Black Kite recently seen in Spain with excellent photographs by Javiar Parrilla. The bird shows a mix of features from both species, both in plumage and structure. These hybrid kites resemble West Siberian Black Kites due to the presence of white on the underwing, so it’s good to be aware of how they look like.

This post describes the geographical variation of the Black Kite across the Palearctic, from the European migrans to the Far Eastern lineatus, with special attention to the intergrades found in Western and Central Asia. We then analyze Black Kites that overwinter in huge numbers in the Middle East, typically originating from this intergradation area. Finally, we demonstrate that Black Kites from Western Siberia, which already exhibit some features reminiscent of lineatus, occasionally appear in Western Europe during the winter.