Day 125 - Lesser Black-Backed Gulls

Apology note: This was supposed to have been yesterday's post but it is both my mum's and my grandad's birthdays this weekend so I didn't have time to do a post yesterday, so expect another post shortly after this one has been published!

A few of the Gulls at Nosterfield

Hi all today's day 125 and I thought I'd do a lovely gull that I saw over at Nosterfield. We were at the huge lake at the quarry where we knew there was a roost and boy was there a roost! You can see how many there was from the picture on the right. There were quite a lot. With the help of my camera, though, I managed to single out a particular type of gull. Most of them were black-headed gulls but there were couple of a different type mixed in with the crowd and they were Lesser-Black-Backed-Gulls.

Here are the facts on these birds:

Lesser Black Backed Gull (Larus fuscus)

• These birds are very picky about where they live. They only live on the coast of Northern Scotland in the Summer. They live in Central Scotland all year round but in Southern Scotland they don't live at all.

• In Northern England they only live on the coast and do not live in Central Northern England. They only live in Central England in Winter but all around the coast of England, they live all year round.

• They are large birds with a 58cm length and a 142cm wingspan. The weigh a lot too with both male and female birds weighing 840g.

• These birds have a very long typical life span of 15 years! But something even more impressive is that the oldest ever gull was 34 years 10 months and 27 days! Now that's an old gull!

A close up!

• They are an Amber List species as the UK is home to 40% of the European population which is quite a lot considering we are one country. Over half of this 40% is actually only found in fewer than ten sites.

• There are a lot more birds around the coast than in Central England as 110,000 birds are there all year round while only 20,000 birds join them in Central England bringing the total up to 130,000.

• These birds are omnivores meaning they will eat both meat and plants. They have a wide diet as well feeding on whatever it can find at rubbish dumps but it will also eat shoals of fish... LOOK OUT!!

• They can be found in any terrain apart from bogs and reed beds but they are much more common on estuaries and open shores.

Here are some links to some more information:

RSPB - Lesser Black-Backed Gulls

BTO - Lesser Black-Backed Gulls

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.