Mediterranean Gull (Larus melanocephalus)

WINTERING

DISTRIBUTION MAPS

Mediterranean Gull © Richard Steel

Mediterranean Gull © Richard Steel

The rise in numbers of this species in Britain has been remarkable. Until 1940 only four or five had ever been recorded, and it remained so rare that records were considered by the British Birds Rarities Committee until 1962. The first in Cheshire and Wirral was identified in 1967 and the species has been recorded every year since. Until about 1994 most records were from the Wirral coast, including the Mersey Narrows, but since then birds have been widespread across the county.

During this Atlas birds were recorded in 29 tetrads, with about a dozen birds each winter of this survey. This is typical of any year in the last ten, since the Cheshire and Wirral Bird Report for 1998 noted that wintering numbers appear to be relatively constant. There is a mixture of site-fidelity and nomadism, with some individuals regularly appearing for several years in succession, and others newly arriving and visiting new sites. Several birds have been noted wearing rings indicating that they were hatched in colonies on the north coast of France or Belgium. In Lancashire, where some observers have carefully observed and reported rings, there are also records of birds from eastern Europe – Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and the Ukraine, showing that some of the Mediterranean Gulls have come from as far as the Black Sea, the heart of the species’ distribution (White et al 2008).

The submitted habitat codes indicate the breadth of areas exploited by Mediterranean Gulls, with 10 records of marine habitats (4 open sea/ shore, 6 estuarine), 11 freshwater (2 small waterbody, 8 lake/ reservoir/ sandpit, 1 river) and four farmland (3 grassland, 1 stubble). Their winter food is similarly varied, marine fish and molluscs, terrestrial invertebrates and anything edible discarded by man. The only record of two birds together during this Atlas survey was at Meols (SJ29F) where Richard Smith saw them ‘feeding on scraps next to a mobile chippy, just over the sea wall from the shore’.

Sponsored by Peter F. Twist