Northern
Fulmar, Fulmaris
glacialis
The Northern Fulmar, a sea-dwelling tubenose that looks like a gull until you get close, comes in dark and light forms (morphs), with every shade in between. The birds pictured above and in flight below are typical dark morphs, which at a distance could be immature gulls. Along the central California coast, the dark morph is the most common form. The tubes on the bills of Fulmars and other seabirds are nostrils; these birds have a keen sense of smell, and often fly from far away to feed on fish offal discarded by fishing boats.
The stiff-winged soaring posture of a Northern Fulmar shows, even at a great
distance, that it really is a shearwater and not a gull.
Above and the two below are pictures of light morph Northern Fulmars, with a plumage pattern similar to many adult gulls.
Most Northern Fulmars fit the pattern of the light or dark morph, but a fair number are in the middle ground. The bird above stood out in a large flock of fulmars as intermediate between the standard morphs.
Most dark morph Northern Fulmars show relatively uniform gray plumage, but a few, like the one pictured above, show considerable mottling. And see below.
This odd-looking patchwork Northern Fulmar was diagnosed by Alvaro Jaramillo, who was leading the late July pelagic trip on which we saw it and several like it, as a year-old dark-morph bird in molt. The smooth gray dark-morph feathers are molting in over feathers nearly white from extreme wear. Both the degree of wear and the early date of molt indicate that the bird is at the end of its first cycle, about a year old. Juvenal plumage grows in earlier than adult plumage, and is generally made up of weaker feathers, both factors conducing to extreme wear by the time of the first pre-basic molt; adult plumage never shows this much wear. Also, adults are still feeding young birds near the nesting grounds, well north of the Farallon Islands where this bird was, and normally haven't started their molt as early as this date.