Western Gull, LARUS OCCIDENTALIS

Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter

from the the May 17, 2009 Newsletter, issued from the Siskiyou Mountains west of Grants Pass, Oregon:
WESTERN GULL
At Harris Beach State Park in Brookings four or five miles north of the California border, an information board told us that on rocks in the fog offshore there were interesting birds like Pigeon Guillemots and Peregrine Falcons but around us on the beach birdlife was about 99% seagulls, the remaining 1% being a crow or two. But which gull was it? Here we could look for Western and California Gulls, which aren't found in the East, but I'd forgotten how to distinguish those gulls from the more wide-ranging species, especially Herring and Ring-billed Gulls. When Anita began sharing her bread with the gulls I snapped some pictures, figuring I'd sort out the ID later. You can see Anita with her gulls below:

*UPDATE: At first I thought these were Herring Gulls but in 2024, with many more identification resources on the Internet, when I uploaded the images to iNaturalist, user "flammulated" recognized the Western Gull, LARUS OCCIDENTALIS. The two species are very similar, but the AllAboutBirds.Org website points out that Herring Gull backs are somewhat paler than the Western's, and their beaks aren't as "bulbous."