Petrel sp.

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  lintworm

• 12 May 2020

That's an immature gull, I don't know which species you get in Australia though.

 

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  Yoshistar888

• 12 May 2020

@lintworm

It’s not an immature gull, even an immature pacific gull doesn’t get this big. I have photos of an immature kelp gull (slightly smaller than pacific gull) and its not even half this size.

 

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  lintworm

• 12 May 2020

@Yoshistar888 You do know that most petrels are far smaller than Pacific and Kelp Gulls. The only ones that are larger are Giant Petrels, but these look completely different and would never have such a dark bill. It still is an immature gull, estimating sizes can be extremely tricky in the wild.....

 

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  Chlidonias

• 12 May 2020

Yes they are gulls - look most like Pacific Gulls from the beak.

 

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  Yoshistar888

• 12 May 2020

@Chlidonias Yikes the fact that an immature pacific gull is considerably larger than an adult silver gull is pretty shocking.

 

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  Chlidonias

• 12 May 2020

@Yoshistar888 juvenile Kelp and Pacific Gulls generally look bigger than the adults of their own species.

Silver Gulls are only small gulls by the way. There's not much to compare them too in Australia except Pacific and Kelp Gulls, but even those latter two species would look small in comparison to some of the Northern Hemisphere species.

 

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  lintworm

• 12 May 2020

@Yoshistar888 Larger gulls can take up to 4 years to get their adult plumage, but within months they will be the size of their parents.

 

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  Yoshistar888

• 12 May 2020

@lintworm

Thanks for sharing something I didn’t know!

This definitely makes sense but doesn’t make it less shocking.

 

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  Chlidonias

• 17 May 2020

@Yoshistar888 here's a photo I took today showing a direct size comparison between Black-backed and Red-billed Gulls (which are the same as your Kelp and Silver Gulls); and note that Pacific Gulls are larger than Kelp Gulls.