Great Black-backed Gull - a photo on Flickriver

            Growing new feathers is an energetically expensive business for birds.  Many small birds have just one moult a year but gulls moult twice.  They have a head and body moult in early spring, lasting one to two months, then a full moult involving wings and tail too in late summer, which lasts 3 to 4 months. Small gulls like Black-headed are indistinguishable from adults by their second winter.  Medium gulls like Common Gull take three years so reach adult plumage by their third winter.  But large gulls like this do not reach adult plumage until their fourth winter, and will breed the following summer.  With each moult they gradually acquire adult plumage and it is usually possible to tell how old any particular immature gull is. I took this Great Black-backed Gull on the Isle of Skye in May this year, just after it had completed a head and body moult, and most of it looks like an adult, apart from its wings and tail.  In late summer this bird would have moulted its wings and tail (and its head and body again) and would look just like an adult, so this is a three-year old bird, hatched in 2018 (confusingly known in the literature as both "third summer" and "fourth calendar year" because the year it hatched is its first calendar year but its first summer is when it is one year old).  By next spring (2022) it should have started to breed itself.  The oldest known Great Black-backed Gull was 26 years 8 months and 8 days, from 2015, but age records are often broken. 
   

Taken on: May 18, 2021

Tags:

Larus

marinus

Black-backed

Gull

second summer

third

calendar

year

Isle

Skye

Portree

Tim Melling « less

Sets appears in: • Explore • British Birds

Groups appears in: • in explore

Stats: 15,481 views / 25 comments

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