The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Also a Velvet Scoter flew north, as did a flock of Common Scoters. Some good skua action all day, with several arctics blogging around offshore. Shame the Audouin's didn't show though.

Norwegian Wood - The Beatles.....

When was the last Audouin's Gull reported and when? Is there any chance of there being another in the UK in the near future? What was the chance of it being identified as an Audouin's Gull this time, are they hard to identify?

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Alastair Carr

Where there is a will, there is a way....

08:20 23/08/08 Audouin's Gull Lincs Chapel Point 08:09 3rd-summer still on the sea a km south of the car park till 08:09 then flew out to sea and lost to view



Yes, all records have occurred since 2003 which mirrors a population and range expansion in a species formerly considered threatened*.



(?) high, so long as the observer has seen the bird or at least an image of one before (!) but note that not all large gulls with red beaks are Audouins... http://www.birdsireland.com/pages/rare_ ... hotos.html

*The global population has been estimated at c.21,500 pairs, and a recent assessment put the European population (including some Spanish islands and islets off Morocco) at 20,500-21,000 pairs (encompassing over 90% of the global population) and stable or increasing throughout. This represents a significant increase from an estimated population of 1,000 pairs in 1975 and is thought to be a result of the increased availability mainly of effectively protected areas during the 1980s, and secondly of discarded fish from the trawlers, particularly around the Ebro Delta1. The large expansion of Larus audouinii in the western Mediterranean has probably caused the breeding population in other parts of the Mediterranean to increase and new colonies have been found in Croatia and even out of the Mediterranean in southern Portugal10,12. Nevertheless more than 90% of the European breeding population occurs at just four sites and only a single site (the Ebro Delta) held 70% of the global breeding numbers in 2006.

_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

I saw that one, when was the one before that seen?

_________________
Alastair Carr

Where there is a will, there is a way....