Slender-billed Gull - from 'A History of the Birds of Europe not observed in the British Isles' by Charles Beebe (1867). Sometimes a bird's name can be an impediment to understanding. It took me a long time as a tyro birdwatcher to realise that 'Garden' Warblers didn't favour gardens and only a little longer to grasp that Honey Buzzards didn't actually eat honey. It's not a problem that's unique to English bird names and is a common problem across Europe. Sometimes names are accurate enough, but don't necessarily filter the possible candidates efficiently. For example, there is no disagreement that the bird which Italians call 'Rosy Gull' (Gabbiano roseo) often has a rosy blush, but obscures the fact that it's a trait shared with a number of closely related gulls. However, the Catalans seem to be a little colour blind as they call it 'White-capped Gull' (Gavina capblanca)! The same species is called by the French 'Mocking Gull' (Goeland railleur) as its call has a laughing ring to it. As these calls resemble those of Black-headed Gull it's not surprising to find that that species has the scientific name ridibundus which means laughing. Naturally, the bird with the scientific name that actually does mean 'black-headed' (melanocephalus) is called the Mediterranean Gull! This only illustrates that scientific names are no more helpful as it's here that things begin to get really complicated. With 'ridibundus' already spoken for the American species we call Laughing Gull has to make do with being called Larus atricilla meaning 'black-tailed gull'. This is a bit awkward as not only do the adults not have black-tails (though young birds do), but it gazumps a real Black-tailed Gull (both adults and young birds of which do have black on the tail). It's scientific name is 'crassirostris' meaning 'heavy-billed' would be fine except that its bill isn't particularly heavy! Naturally the gull with the tag 'rosea' isn't the Italian 'Rosy Gull', but the arctic Ross's Gull! However, none of these inappropriate or misapplied names actually managed to confuse ornithologists unlike the Italians' 'Rosy Gull' which in English known as Slender-billed Gull. It's a name shared by most European languages as no matter which language you pick - Kaitanokkalokki (Finnish), Dunbekmeeuw (Dutch), Dunnschnabligemowe (German), Tyndnaebbet mage (Danish), Racek tenkozobý (Czech), Mewa cienkodzioba (Polish), Vékonycsórú sirály (Hungarian), Smalnabbadmas (Swedish) Gaviotta picofina (Spanish) and Gaviota-de-bico-fino (Portuguese) – the name means 'slender-billed'. With such a consensus it's pretty clear that the bird must have an impressively slender bill …. except that it hasn't! Although longer, the bill is no more slender (indeed it's actually thicker) than several closely related small gulls.
D I M Wallace's line drawing from his paper showing the distinctive shape of Slender-billed on the water. What we call Slender-billed Gull was described in 1839 by the Marquis de Breme (1807-1869) who was himself was no slouch at this name game being variously known as Ferdinando Arborio Gattinara di Brême, François Brême or Ferdinando Arborio di Gattinara! He named it Larus genei after his fellow Italian and friend Carlo Guiseppe Gené. Presumably Brême, or another early writer, described the bill as being 'slender' and this simply stuck. Even the first edition of the famous Peterson field guide (published in 1954) claimed, wrongly, that the bill was "noticeably more slender" than a Black-headed Gull's. This myth was firmly slapped down by the inimitable D I M Wallace (DIMW) who wrote in a paper in British Birds (1964) which opened with the words “First and foremost, in spite of statements to the contrary in several authoritative handbooks …., the Slender-billed Gull … does not have a slender bill. Compared with that of the species which it most closely resembles …. the bill …. is clearly longer, deeper and heavier-looking ….” Newer editions of Peterson got it right and by 1972 the new “The Birds of Britain and Europe” (Heinzel et al) confidently stated that the species resembled Black-headed Gull but with a “.... longer stouter much darker red bill ...” However, old habits die hard and “The Hamlyn Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe” (both the 1971 original & the 1978 revision) perpetuated the myth that the bill was slender by writing “... notice the white wing-tips of adults, lack of hood, and long thin bill ...” It also introduced an error of its own since although the fore-wing is largely white, the wing-tips themselves are actually finely edged in black.
The gravitational centre of the species population still remains in the east with the up to 230,000+ birds around the Black Sea and 150,000 more further east, but over the past few decades there's been a remarkable increase in the west. Although Irby reported finding a nest and eggs on the marismas as early as 1879 this population never seems to have been very secure and, despite several hundred thought to have bred there around the turn of the century, breeding seems to have ceased (or gone unrecorded) until nests were found in the early 1960s. Initially the increase was a mere trickle with literally a handful breeding on Fuente de Piedra (from 1965) and a few more on the Ebro Delta from 1975. Through the 1970s and into the early 1980s numbers remained low, but from the mid 1980s numbers started to see-sawed between zero and several hundred pairs until, by the 1990s, the population increase began to accelerate. Since 2000, although numbers still fluctuate, the Spanish population has remained above 1,000 pairs with the bulk being found on the Ebro delta and the lower Guadalquivir. This remarkable increase has held true across the western Mediterranean with Sardinia and the Po delta being colonised (now c3,300 pairs) in Italy and the Camargue in France, (where it was previously only an irregular breeder in small numbers) which now hosts up to c900 pairs. At the same time birds expanded along the western Mediterranean coast of North Africa and even reached Mauritania on the Atlantic coast (now thought to have up to c20,000 birds this country was probably colonised in the 1960s. Although nobody's quite sure of the reason behind this shift in population the front runner is the degradation of the wetlands around the Black Sea (particularly in Romania where they species, formerly common, is now rare) which forced birds to look elsewhere.
Whilst I've a vivid memory of seeing my first British Slender-billed Gull at Dungeness in 1971 (the third British record), I can't recall at all whether I saw them in Andalucia or on the Camargue which I'd visited a couple of years before – I suspect not. Any visitor to those two areas today would certainly expect to see them, but back then, as noted above, only a handful bred (if at all) at either site. Embarrassingly, when I twitched the Dungeness bird, I recall worrying about how easy it would be to pick out from multitudes of Black-headed Gulls. In theory this should have been easy since the adult Slender-billed Gull has a pure white head whereas winter Black-headed Gulls always have black smudges, but theory was one thing and sifting thorough large packs of gulls on the beach or out on the patch was quite another! Even if Peterson had now made clear that the bill wasn't 'slender', the only illustration in our edition of that book was small, monochrome and showed a bird that seemed identical in wing-pattern, size and shape to Black-headed Gull! The new Hamlyn guide was a lot better as, although it got the head shape approximately right, much else was wrong! In my defence it wasn't that long ago that even the fearsome D D Harber, the notoriously opinionated chairman of the UK rarities committee and finder of the first British record, had had to go up to London to check skins before he was confident of his identification! It's a reflection of how well traveled modern birders are compared to those in the 1960s that neither Harber nor other observers of this bird had ever seen one before!
Back in 1971, we'd just split up to crunch along the beach to look for the bird, when suddenly there it was flying up over the shingle and above our heads. The immediately obvious thing wasn't its unmarked white head or its greater size, but the long drooping bill, the long flat forehead and flatter head shape which merged into a distinctively long neck. The pinkish glow was noted almost as an after thought. In fact, although some books stress little more than the white head and that Slender-billed Gull is larger than its cousin, the striking thing about the bird I saw in Kent was its characteristic long-necked appearance. Even the size difference can be overstated as there is some overlap between the largest Black-headed and smallest Slender-billed Gulls. Unfortunately, between a marriage, children and mortgage meant I didn't see another one until one conveniently turned up at Grove Ferry in May 1999.
Fortunately I didn't have to wait quite so long for my next sighting since, now divested of a mortgage and responsibility for my children, but, happily, not my wife, I was able to start visiting souther Spain regularly from 2005 onwards. If much had changed in my life then so too had things changed in the fortunes of Slender-billed Gull! Happily following its resurgence there are now three regular colonies in western Andalucia – all three, Marismas del Guadalquivir and Veta la Palma (Seville) and Bonanza (Cadiz), within the broader confines of the Coto Donana. Any one of these sites is sometimes unoccupied, but one at least always has some birds so the local population fluctuates between 150 - 550 pairs. I've also seen birds in early spring behaving as if they might nest on the Mesas de Asta marshes. For good views, though, nowhere beats the salinas at Bonanza. So this welcome increase means that it's been my good fortune to see this handsome gull regularly over the past few years and my initial impression of its distinctiveness has only increased. Adult birds with a pinkish hue can be seen at all seasons, but it's in the breeding season (April-June) that they're at their best. At this time too the red legs take on a slightly darker shade and the bill, scarlet over the winter, becomes dark almost to the point of being black. Seen at close quarters the iris can be seen to be pale straw and there's fine red rim around the eye itself. But it's the colour of the underparts that can be really striking and truly earns the species its Italian name 'Gabbiano roseo'. Some, it's true, are hardly more pink that the odd Black-headed Gulls, but others are much brighter. Fewer still are a bright day-glow pink on the head and underparts with a delicate pink suffusion invading tail, the white wedge on the forewing and even, in the most excessive examples, the pale grey back. This sets of the mascara'd bill wonderfully. Add to all this the elegantly long neck supporting the somewhat aesthetically stylish flat head and you have the image of a gull masquerading as a top Paris supermodel on the catwalk. It's all delicacy and refinement! Even one who often suffers from Laridae-phobia couldn't fail to be impressed. Then, as if that weren't enough on the water with its head held high, its giraffe neck inclined at an angle and its rear parts raised it looks like a phalarope wannabe (see Wallace's drawing from 'BB'). In short they're very handsome birds and well worth a trip to Bonanza.
Fortunately I didn't have to wait quite so long for my next sighting since, now divested of a mortgage and responsibility for my children, but, happily, not my wife, I was able to start visiting souther Spain regularly from 2005 onwards. If much had changed in my life then so too had things changed in the fortunes of Slender-billed Gull! Happily following its resurgence there are now three regular colonies in western Andalucia – all three, Marismas del Guadalquivir and Veta la Palma (Seville) and Bonanza (Cadiz), within the broader confines of the Coto Donana. Any one of these sites is sometimes unoccupied, but one at least always has some birds so the local population fluctuates between 150 - 550 pairs. I've also seen birds in early spring behaving as if they might nest on the Mesas de Asta marshes. For good views, though, nowhere beats the salinas at Bonanza. So this welcome increase means that it's been my good fortune to see this handsome gull regularly over the past few years and my initial impression of its distinctiveness has only increased. Adult birds with a pinkish hue can be seen at all seasons, but it's in the breeding season (April-June) that they're at their best. At this time too the red legs take on a slightly darker shade and the bill, scarlet over the winter, becomes dark almost to the point of being black. Seen at close quarters the iris can be seen to be pale straw and there's fine red rim around the eye itself. But it's the colour of the underparts that can be really striking and truly earns the species its Italian name 'Gabbiano roseo'. Some, it's true, are hardly more pink that the odd Black-headed Gulls, but others are much brighter. Fewer still are a bright day-glow pink on the head and underparts with a delicate pink suffusion invading tail, the white wedge on the forewing and even, in the most excessive examples, the pale grey back. This sets of the mascara'd bill wonderfully. Add to all this the elegantly long neck supporting the somewhat aesthetically stylish flat head and you have the image of a gull masquerading as a top Paris supermodel on the catwalk. It's all delicacy and refinement! Even one who often suffers from Laridae-phobia couldn't fail to be impressed. Then, as if that weren't enough on the water with its head held high, its giraffe neck inclined at an angle and its rear parts raised it looks like a phalarope wannabe (see Wallace's drawing from 'BB'). In short they're very handsome birds and well worth a trip to Bonanza.
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