Any one have any idea what this bird is. It was with a flock of at least 100 Ring billed gulls it is at lest 50% bigger than them. A few quick AI searches gave different answers each time.

I believe that is a juvenile herring gull. They are huge. We have them in Ohio. I saw a lot of them at Sandusky on Lake Erie, when we were catfishing a couple of months ago.

Keith

No, they taste like bald eagles!!!

More like boiled Owl.

A Glacous Gull (sp) is a large gull colored like that. They are mean too. They will kill a duck.

Juvenile Herring Gull

If it is a juvenile herring gull it will have pink legs.

Keith nailed it.

Owls, especially in the winter, often have ridiculous amounts of fat (I'm thinking it could be the main reason why they oftrn get hit by cars in the winter, they catch voles trapped on the road by snow embankments and are too heavy to take off fast).
The meat is pale and the smell is very inoffensive. The fat is faintly yellowish and semitranslucent and seems to have a low freezing point. I considered rendering some))

Ravens and gulls on the other hand....
The worst-smelling birds in my experience are black kites.

They're landfill dwellers but after the relatively recent near-extinction of vultures in India due to diclifenac poisoning, things got interesting. Those vultures used to eat all dead bodies (and you know how those people "bury" their dead) but now it's stray dogs and kites. And kites are migratory, unlike vultures, so in the spring, they return here from their winter vacations fattened up on lightly grilled Indian cadavers. With all the bacteria an viruses btw. Bon apettit.

Yes, Immature Herring gull, it takes 2 plus years to get their adult feathers, immature Black back gulls are similar , but even bigger, those are the real tough guys!..

Got both gulls around the boat when I'm out, very smart....the black backs will swoop in on the fly and carry off a bunker from the bait tray as soon as I turn my back...I have an adult herring gull follow me everywhere, sits on the boat, hops onto the crab pot I'm ready to bait, and wrestles me for a taste, lol, I have to push him away when he gets too greedy, lol

Thanks guys, I think you are right on with the juvenile herring gull. I was thrown off by the dark bill. I didn't realize the bill color would change over time.

No I actually knew someone that tried to eat one, and that was after a week without food and weeks before that on short rations so he was more then hungry enough to eat anything but even so he couldn’t choke it down, he described the taste as rotten cod liver oil mixed with very rancid grease, he said even the cooking smell was nauseating, the man served with my dad in WW2 and I can’t remember how it t came up but he looked like he was still remembering the taste when he described it to me as a kid back in the 70sf

I remember reading in the early 70's, that the Vietnamese immigrants, when they first came to America, would buy an old boat, live and commercial fish off it, and eat anything that was not sale-able that came up in the nets, "junk" fish, seabirds, whatever...they would save their money and buy a better boat and ended up being quite successful...trick was not spend anymore than they had to to move up...