This site presents data and images relating to gulls,
primarily in the West
Midlands Region (the counties of Staffordshire, Warwickshire,
Worcestershire and the metropolitan county of the West Midlands).
The status of the
commoner species is summarised, with breeding information where
appropriate, and maximum counts from roosting
sites are provided. For scarcer species such as Mediterranean Gull,
Glaucous Gull, Iceland Gull and Caspian Gull detailed analyses of annual, seasonal and geographical
distributions are presented. For the truly rare species, with fewer than
30 records in total (such as Bonaparte's Gull, Franklin's Gull and
Ring-billed Gull), all records are
tabulated. References to key printed
texts by other authors and the URLs of some other useful gull web-sites are
listed.
A gallery of images of
selected forms is included.
Some have been taken at long range and have been selected to illustrate typical and atypical individuals,
the range of variation, the progress of moult, and sometimes purely as
noteworthy 'record shots'.
Most pictures
of the commoner species are my own,
taken primarily at sites in the West Midlands
Region. Other pictures, of some of the scarcer species
visiting the West Midlands Region,
have been supplied by Roger Clay, Graham Evans, John Harris, Phil Jones, John Judge, John Mallinson, Steve Nuttall,
Steve Seal, Peter Stewart and Andy Warr. Their photographs significantly enhance the breadth of interest of
the 'Picture Gallery'. Much of the
underlying raw numerical data comes from the
West Midland Bird Club's
Annual Report and principal thanks go the observers contributing
their observations and to the compilers of the Annual Reports. Several
of the analyses are updates of articles previously published by the
author in the West Midland Bird Report,
in the journal British
Birds and in the magazine Birdwatch.
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