Chips down for handsome gulls
There’s one word likely to get birdwatchers screeching, flapping their arms manically and gripping onto their chips – ‘seagull’.
Literary giants, film-makers, football teams and pop bands have all embraced this dreaded term in their quest for creative excellence.
Mention the S-word at a gathering of keen birders, however, and you’ll face the kind of fury a herring gull shows when its nest is threatened. Not a pretty sight.
The reason ‘seagull’ is so inflammatory is because lumping these handsome creatures under one label, rather than glorifying them species by species, is a travesty.
What also sticks in the gizzard is to misconstrue that gulls are exclusively maritime. The fact is you can bask in the full gull experience as easily inland as on the coast.
For this very reason, I recently joined gull aficionado and old schoolfriend John Lynch on an important project for the British Trust for Ornithology.
The Winter Gull Survey (WINGS) – being staged this year and next – sees volunteers visiting roost sites to tally the following key species: black-headed gull, common gull, Mediterranean gull, lesser black-backed gull, herring gull and great black-backed gull.
All six are of conservation concern, with breeding populations that are either amber or red-listed in the UK.
By cataloguing wintering numbers and their roost sites, more effective conservation strategies can be developed.
Our venue was a working sand quarry on the edge of the Chiltern Hills, where gulls come to roost on a vast stretch of open water as dusk falls.
John tasked me with logging the common and lesser black-backed gulls – 882 and 25 individuals, respectively – while he took on the onerous challenge of counting 2,228 black-headed gulls and 104 herring gulls.
It was while John was explaining the intricacies of herring gull plumage, his sharp eyes also added two scarce species from distant lands – a couple of yellow-legged gulls from southern Europe and two glorious Caspian gulls from the Balkans or far beyond.
Now I understand why saying seagull is always an own goal…
Lumping all handsome gulls under one label is nothing but a travesty