I want to blend the background to the left of this seagulls beak. What would be the best tool to use in PS?

Not sure if this is what you meant. I read your post to mean that you were trying to smooth and blend the colors into each other that were in front of the birds beak.

First I used the lasso tool with a 10px feather and roughly selected the area and the used the motion blur under filter Angle:-29, distance 113.

I think a little clearer description of your objective might be helpful.

dc

Thanks dc. Thats what I was trying to achieve. A very useful technique but it does make a "patch" on the image. I guess the other option would be to lasso the seagull and blur all of the background. I assume that by feathering the Lasso tool this blends the adjusted area? Many thanks for your reply. Mark

I used the patch tool selected the area to patch and patched from right side of the photo behind the seagull. Then a small amount of sharpening on the seagull.