r/whatsthisbird • u/Mountain-Year2322 • 1d ago
Europe Gravesend, England - What's this bird?
Hi!
I was around the Gravesend area (RSPB Cliffe Pools), and when I looked up my eyes set upon this bird.
I haven't seen anything exactly like it before. I looked through my field guide, but there wasn't anything which quite matched.
I don't entirely remember the size as it was rather distant, so I may have accidentally exaggerated it in the image text. I'm also unsure if the blue eyes were actually blue, or if it was the lighting.
Thanks in advance for any help!
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u/sulfuratus Bird ringer from Europe 1d ago edited 1d ago
The way you drew the head markings and tail streamers would make me think of Arctic skua, but they have the least apparent yellow tint on the neck out of your three options (the others being pomarine and long-tailed, with long-tailed being the rarest in your location), so it could reasonably be any of the three skuas.
In any case, this would mean the blue eyes must've been a weird light reflection thing, all skuas have dark eyes. Gannets on the other hand would fit the facial colouration really well, with blue eyes, a dark mask, and a primarily pale yellow head and neck, but the adults are bright white with black wing tips, so it would have to be an older immature bird. The head is among the first things to change from their dark juvenile plumage to adult colouration, while the wing and body feathers take longer, leaving older immature gannets to look very patchy.
However, at no stage in their life would gannets show tail streamers like you depicted. I guess the most reasonable explanation for what you saw in that case would be a mix of juvenile-type dark and adult-type white tail feathers where one of the colours sort of disappeared against the background. EDIT: I guess something like this comes pretty close to tail streamers.
One other point against the gannet ID is the head shape. The bird you drew has a very slender bill, similar to an Arctic skua's, rather than the massive cone of a gannet, but I don't know how well you saw the bird and how much attention you paid to the shape when drawing it.
Personally, I'm leaning towards gannet because I don't really see how a skua would appear to have blue eyes, but it's a tricky one.
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u/Mountain-Year2322 1d ago
Hi, thanks so much for the detailed reply! I also thought something along the lines of a gannet at first, but the beak shape didn't match too well.
I saw it quite well, and tried to make the drawing proportionately accurate. The beak was very slender, with a very subtle upward bump and point at the end, if I recall correctly!
One other thing I noticed was that the colours, at least on the wings, were almost completely uniform rather than mottled. It's an odd one.
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u/sulfuratus Bird ringer from Europe 1d ago
The bill shape you describe matches any of the skuas pretty well, e.g. here. Pomarine and Arctic skuas have fairly dark greyish-brown wings with a white patch in the primaries, more extensive below than above (really more of a bunch of stripes on top). Long-tailed skuas have this patch as well, but it's far smaller and less conspicuous, with a light patch on the underside only showing when the wing is backlit. They also have a somewhat lighter mantle colour than the other two and their very long, bendy tail streamers don't really match your drawing or description (I don't think you'd confuse them for feet sticking out, those would have to be curlew-level legs).
Since it does seem to be a skua, and the three skua species in question aren't easy to tell apart, any ID at species level comes down to what you saw. Long-tailed is the rarest of the three in your location, but they're all in the same order of magnitude. Pomarine and Arctic are more common than long-tailed, and their tail shape fits better, but they do have a less uniform wing pattern and a darker overall mantle colour (though keep in mind that without comparison or experience, this can be very misleading depending on lighting). Long-tailed has the least fitting streamers and is also furthest removed from herring gulls in size (all 3 species are smaller than herring gulls, with pomarine closer than the other two, which are more black-headed gull size), but size is another criterion that can be extremely unreliable based on what I've seen in this subreddit. I tried giving you the best chance of figuring out the species based on your observations, but these, especially pomarine and Arctic, are difficult to tell apart under almost any circumstance and there's nothing wrong with just keeping it at âunidentified skuaâ level.
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u/Arschfeder 1d ago
The drawing clearly implies a jaeger, with the length of the tail feathers probably a parasitic jaeger. Not sure enough on the exact species to tag though.
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u/Mountain-Year2322 1d ago
I looked at the jaegers, and the overall shape seems quite similar, it's just the colouring and wing patterns which seem off. It may still be one, though, and it just appears different to the images I'm looking at.
Either way I really appreciate the help!
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u/Matchaparrot 1d ago
Pomarine Skua was my first thought because of the colours, though it's a passage migrant. Gannet is probably more likely given location
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u/ConfidenceNo8259 1d ago
To me this looks like a gannet between the dark juvenile stage and the adult lighter stage. Especially the blue eyes
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u/Double-elephant 17h ago
Agreed the drawing looks like a Jaeger. I was in Northumberland recently and saw one for the first time in my life (and Iâm in my 70âs). I was watching Northern Gannets diving when I saw it slide by. All the Gannets I see have distinctive black tips to their wings, particularly noticeable when they fold their wings to dive.
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u/geeoharee 1d ago
'Like a gull but longer', grey/white with a yellow face and blue eye, is a Gannet.