I am wrong?

[Watlizzie]

I thought this was a ringbilled seagull,but sleuth say it’s a Herring gull? This was seen in the Florida  shores  .I need help with Id .Thanks in advance

[JP48]

Given the pink legs, I'd go with Herring Gull.  I think the beak of a young Herring Gull is generally all black, and the beak of a young Ring-billed would have a yellow tip.  Disclaimer: I'm not much of an authority on gulls.

[Watlizzie]

Thank you @JP48 I appreciate.

[psweet]

This is indeed a young Herring Gull. Young gulls are complicated things to ID -- first thing you want to do is age the bird. In this case, there's quite a few worn feathers, and it looks like two generations of feathers on the back. (There are ones that look more worn and faded than the others.) Ring-billed are 3-year gulls (meaning that they only take 3 years to reach adult plumage), whereas Herring are 4-year gulls. That means that a Ring-billed's second set of feathers is going to be closer to adult-like than in a Herring Gull. In fact, with Ring-bills, their second set of feathers on the back come in their first fall (like right now) and they're gray just like adults. If you see a second set of feathers like this, still showing spots, it's not going to be a Ring-billed.

[Administrator]

3 minutes ago, psweet said:

This is indeed a young Herring Gull. Young gulls are complicated things to ID -- first thing you want to do is age the bird. In this case, there's quite a few worn feathers, and it looks like two generations of feathers on the back. (There are ones that look more worn and faded than the others.) Ring-billed are 3-year gulls (meaning that they only take 3 years to reach adult plumage), whereas Herring are 4-year gulls. That means that a Ring-billed's second set of feathers is going to be closer to adult-like than in a Herring Gull. In fact, with Ring-bills, their second set of feathers on the back come in their first fall (like right now) and they're gray just like adults. If you see a second set of feathers like this, still showing spots, it's not going to be a Ring-billed.

Psweet that is an insightful and intelligent amount of investigative analysis of the Gull. How, I wondered, were you able to tell that there are two generations of feathers on its back? And that one set looks more worn and faded than others. Were there any other diagnostic marks that helped, such as the pink legs or the black vs yellow beak that JP48 mentions? I ask because Sleuth is almost certain its a Herring Gull and I'm wondering what neural network temporal layer was able to deduce this.

[psweet]

Worn, faded feathers tend to have frayed edges and markings that are blurred, low-contrast, etc. Fresh feathers have crisply-defined edges, often with a bit of contrast, and clean, crisp, contrasty markings -- when you get the two together, the difference shows up nicely. Other diagnostic marks? The pink legs do help, although you have to be careful of leg color in youngsters -- a first-year bird especially can surprise you. Similarly, the bill pattern does fit a young Herring, although the structure is a better clue -- fairly heavy with a distinct gonydeal angle. Also, young Ring-billed should never be mottled on the undersides -- the breast and neck have very clean dark scaling, the belly tends to lose that pretty quickly and ends up white. The back in juveniles is well-marked, but even then it's very clean and regular, with dark centers and pale edges to the feathers, rather than the anchor-shapes you see here.

A lot of ID'ing immature gulls, though (except for a few experts), comes down to elimination by range. Fact is, there are several European species, etc. that I couldn't possibly rule out here -- but they're very unlikely to be there, so I don't worry about it. Given the location and date, the other options are Great and Lesser Black-backed and Laughing. Laughing is quite different even as a juvenile. Great Black-backed should be overall bulkier, with a more checkered back pattern and a whiter head, and a heavier bill. Lesser is closer to this, but they shouldn't show so many warm tones in the plumage, and be a bit whiter on the head.

Can't help you with the programming side of things -- I can understand the general idea of neural networking, but I couldn't explain it any better than we can understand how it happens in our own heads.

[Administrator]

18 hours ago, psweet said:

Can't help you with the programming side of things -- I can understand the general idea of neural networking, but I couldn't explain it any better than we can understand how it happens in our own heads.

This might help you understand how a neural network works. Its an interview with Bill Atkinson by Leo Laporte on Twit.tv Triangulation. Bill invented HyperCard for the Macintosh, developed the Mac's QuickDraw routines (which revolutionized how computers could use a bit mapped display to do graphics) and founded General Magic which was the foundation upon which 4 years later the iPhone was based upon. There is a section in the interview about how the brain actually learns. Extremely lucid explanation.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fZV6WbpHQzI9XnDpkXEVysZGU_YneF21Dz27DmgSTNU/edit#gid=5724736 
Brain stuff starts at 41 minutes in.

[Watlizzie]

Thank you so much,wow! you guys are amazing! @psweet and @Administrator  

[Administrator]

It be great if you could leave a review for Sleuth and maybe mention this web site service for helping you out?

[Watlizzie]

Sure, I am more than happy to do that I will write a review as soon as I can.

Thank you, once again.