Franklin's vs. Laughing Gull

[floraphile]

23 Dec 2020 Public pier on bay

Before I started birding I knew all of the gulls of Alabama:  1) Laughing Gull  2) not a Laughing Gull  

Now that I know about Franklin's, I feel I don't even know Laughing Gulls anymore.  In the past I would have called the 5 gulls in the background Laughing Gulls, but now I am wondering if the amount of dark grey on their heads is more consistent with Franklin's.  Am I overanalyzing?  I think the one in the foreground is a Ring-Billed

 

[floraphile]

8 minutes ago, floraphile said:

23 Dec 2020 Public pier on bay

Before I started birding I knew all of the gulls of Alabama:  1) Laughing Gull  2) not a Laughing Gull  

Now that I know about Franklin's, I feel I don't even know Laughing Gulls anymore.  In the past I would have called the 5 gulls in the background Laughing Gulls, but now I am wondering if the amount of dark grey on their heads is more consistent with Franklin's.  Am I overanalyzing?  I think the one in the foreground is a Ring-Billed

 

So I just saw that Franklin's is rare here in Winter, so these are most likely Laughing Gulls.  A single individual Franklin's has been sighted in my county a few times over the last few weeks.   But, just looking at morphology, if this picture had been taken where both occur with regularity--what are the differentiating features?

[Charlie Spencer]

Franklin's are smaller enough than Laughers that I'd think it would be visible =IF= they were together.

I have to keep reminding myself the foreground bird is RBGU, not the LAGU we're discussing comparison with.

[Charlie Spencer]

Bump.

[Tony Leukering]

17 hours ago, Charlie Spencer said:

Franklin's are smaller enough than Laughers that I'd think it would be visible =IF= they were together.

Trues, which makes the relatively small size difference between the Ringer and the birds in question a strong ID character for Laugher.