Feathered Fridays - Black-headed Gull

 

Zeynel Cebeci, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Chroicocephalus ridibundus

When you think of gulls, you usually tend to imagine the raucous flocks of immense Herring Gulls that mob you for your chips at the seaside and stalk your school’s playing field after lunch in search of scraps. What you might be less likely to picture is their scarcer, more diminutive cousin, the Black-headed Gull. Weighing in at a mere 225-350g – only half the weight of the Herring at best – and with a short 1m wingspan, this is the second smallest gull seen in Britain after the Little Gull. Their laughing, almost screaming calls, inspired the latter half of their scientific name, ridibundus, from the Latin ‘ridere’ meaning ‘to laugh’.

They have come to populate many of our inland habitats from farmlands to towns, rivers to refuse tips and can be seen in Britain all year round, particularly in winter when they can number some 2.2million birds. Meanwhile, in summer, 140,000 breeding pairs have been recorded, each raising a brood of 2-3 eggs a year in a small wetland nest of stems. This nest they like to keep clear of any empty eggshells, it has been observed, and will periodically remove them from the nest, most likely to reduce the risk of predation by making the nest less visible.

But what is perhaps most intriguing is that, contrary to their name, for most of their 10-15-year lifespan, Black-headed gulls do not have black heads. The hood of dark feathers on their faces makes up part of their summer plumage and only reaches its full lustre by their third year at which time they are ready to breed. And this lustre is, even at its height, more of a chocolate brown than the coal black head sported by Mediterranean Gulls and Little Gulls as part of their Summer plumage. For the most part, their heads are largely white with a dark ‘ear-spot’, a feature common in gulls of their size. They can also be differentiated from other common gulls by the deep red colouration of their legs and bill.

Their diet consists mainly of worms, seeds, fish and insects, rather rustic for a stereotypically sea-faring bird, but their modern habitat has also opened the menu to more opportunistic delicacies such as refuse scraps and kitchen waste. So, who knows, you might see a few Black-headed gulls circling your neighbourhood come dinner time.

Facts taken from: the RSPB, Wikipedia, and the RSPB’s ‘Birds of Britain and Europe’ Guidebook by Rob Hume.