Pacific Gull (the sea air always makes me yawn)

Despite appearances the right-hand bird was not actually yawning or vocalising but displaying a repeated, silent gaping behaviour.
Location: Marion Bay, southeastern Tasmania, Australia


Equipment: Canon EOS 7D II, EF 100-400 L IS II + 1.4x III TC, at 560mm, centre spot servo AF, handheld, manual exposure, 1/1000 sec, f11, ISO 800, spot metering
Processing: Canon DPP4 for RAW conversion, lens corrections and initial exposure corrections, NR and sharpening. Then 16-bit TIFF export to Photoshop CC2018 for further NR using Neat Image plugin applied at different levels to bird and background; final sharpening of the birds only, after size reduction to web submission dimensions.


Comments and suggestions welcome,
Cheers, David

Nice to see two gulls in the frame. The pose on the right one is nice. I like the water. Details look quite good.

Hi David,

Thanks for sharing this one. I love gulls and gull photos, especially those species that I have not seen. What huge bills! I like the framing and wish of course that the front bird had a decent head angle. The position of the breaking wave is unfortunate. Do you konw which sex is the larger one?

with love, artie

Thanks for the feedback, John and Artie.


For Artie: I agree about the background wave and the head angle, the latter I'm training myself to be more aware of in the field lately. The sexes are identical in this species, so not sure if the larger bird is a male and the other female. They are both adult birds as juveniles are dark brown all over and immatures have dark brown spots through the white areas. They are quite big birds - can be over 2 feet beak to tail, and wingspans up to 5 feet or so. Not sure how they got their Pacific Gull common name, as the range is southern Australian coastal waters from Sydney (New South Wales) to Carnarvon on the Western Australian coast, including all Tasmanian coastal waters. They're also commonly called Mollyhawks.


Cheers, David

Thanks David. From Seabirds, and Identification Guide, by my friend Petter Harrison: Males averages larger.

with love, artie