welcome to (the) caspian and yellow-legged gulls gallery!
this website provides a large gallery of gull pics all made in romania, focussing basically on the problematic species pair larus michahellis & larus cachinnans. the photos are accompanied by text outlining individual variation and general identification features. comments are most welcome – any larophile knows how "subjective" large gulls identification can be and that different people see different things, thus helping to solve problematic cases.
quite some photographers have contributed their pictures, all of which gave me the kind permission to use them for the purpose of this website. since 2007 many photos have been shot especially for this project. and it is an ongoing project – new pics will be added by the time coming.
why another gull website?
many excellent galleries with gulls pics already exist (see links).
yellow-legged gulls photographed in the mediterranean and in western europe are well documented, yet variation in the 'eastern type michahellis' occuring in the black/aegean seas is poorly covered. also caspian gull, a species which gained rising attention among western european birders during the past 2 decades, only appear in relatively small numbers of pics on the existing websites. in this gallery there will be a large number of comparison pics of all age classes and from all different times of the year; and mostly they stem from the only existing contact zone in breeding range, located on the romanian black sea coast.