Anyone good with bird skulls?

[actionfinch]

It looks like im going to be outvoted on this one....

[actionfinch]

Dragging this thread back from the dark , the result is that its a black headed gull....
we must use more polls there fun...

[Deb London]

Yes indeedy. I do like polls.

[actionfinch]

what shall we poll for next then Deb?

[RKB]

Thing about bird skulls is that they have a keratin sheath that covers the bill in life and creates most of the distinctive shape, but this only hangs on for a while after death, after which it falls off and only the jaw is left (bony core of the beak).

The pic in the OP post has lost the sheath, but those in some of the subsequent posts haven't (e.g the common gull and bhg), so you can't really compare. Problem is that once you've lost the sheath then you've lost a lot of the key shape - I have a kestrel skull that has a detached sheath and without it it looks like a sparrow! (i.e. no hooked tip).

So it's pretty hard to tell what this is, although it's clearly a gull or tern. Only clue would be from the size - BWP will give head+bill measurements, so you could work it out from that, although you'd have to add a couple of mm for the lost sheath. Although that still might not separate e.g. bhg and common tern.