Without trying to get up the nose of any serious gull-watcher out there who hasn’t had the opportunity to travel that I have, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have seen virtually every single species of northern hemisphere gull in the last twenty years (and to do that you really need to get yourself out to the US/Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. Oh, and I may really like gulls, but I said ’seen’ not ‘learnt to identify on every occasion’ should you be wondering…)

‘Virtually’ is not ‘every’ though, and there are two desirable gulls that have until today been glaring gaps on my larid list: the southern US’s Yellow-footed Gull, and the Near-Threatened Mediterranean endemic Audouin’s Gull. To get to see the Yellow-footed I’m going to have to make a concerted effort to drive down to the Salton Sea on one of my winter Los Angeles trips instead of going back to Bolsa Chica or somewhere relatively close to the hotel we stay at. To see an Audouin’s though I either had to make a special trip into southern Europe or hope one would come to the UK and remain in one place long enough for me to see it. Fortunately - and I really do mean fortunately - yesterday me and the UK’s fourth ever Audouin’s Gull, a gloriously insouciant adult, co-incided on a strip of windsept Lincolnshire beach at a place called Wolla Bank (near Chapel St Leonard’s).

Once one of the rarest gulls in the world (the population had dropped to around just 1,000 individuals by the 1970s), Audouin’s Gulls breeds in scattered colonies throughout the Mediterranean and thanks to intensive protection measures numbers have now climbed back towards 20,000 - though 90% of the population is concentrated in just two main colonies, meaning a single natural or anthropogenic disaster could plunge the species back into the danger zone. Not known for vagrancy Audouin’s Gull has been definitely recorded just a handful of times in the UK - the first as recently as 2003 - and I’d not been able to go to see any of the previous ones: however, when an email from the BristolWildlife Yahoo group plopped into my mail box with the question “Would anyone like to go to see the Lincs Audouin’s Gull tomorrow?” I just had to say “You betcha!”.

The emailer was a local birder, Martyn Hayes (who runs the small but beautifully formed Birds of South Gloucestershire website, which now - I’m very grateful to add - sports a very prominent link to our Sharpe’s Longclaw project on its homepage [thanks Martyn]). I’d not met Martyn before, but the idea of a ten-hour round-trip with a stranger was never going to be something that would get in the way of me and my date with Larus audouinii (the 100GBP petrol bill if I drove there and back on my own is another matter though). I called the number on the email - birders, you’ve just got to love how open they are - and arranged to meet at 05:00 the next morning. As it turned out Martyn was a very friendly and easy-going bloke, and before either of us knew it (well, okay the last twenty miles seemed to take longer than the previous two hundred and twenty and was a painful crawl through local rush-hour traffic) we found ourselves standing in a gale staring out at a turbulent churning sea that the description “leaden” seemed to have been coined for…

I’m not always the most optimistic birder on the planet, and after two hours of staring at storm-driven Sandwich Terns and not much else (and being buffeted by cold winds and showers that must have been striking absolute dread into the thousands of parents that were at that moment waking up in caravan parks with their kids all along this part of the coast), I decided that I’d get a couple of hot baps for Martyn and I from the handily-placed cafe just 100m away and reflect on what drives normally sensible people to get up at dawn to look for a red-billed,dark-legged gull that surely must have high-tailed it back to warmer waters during the night…

Of course, no sooner had I placed our order than a group of locals supping strong tea called out to me that “Something’s happening outside, lad, they’re all running around…”. Oh my God, the bird must have just flown by I’d missed it etc etc (haven’t times changed, by the way, non-birders actually seem to understand what we’re all about these days). I hurtled back out of the cafe - explaining that I’d be back to pick up the food as soon as I’d seen the bird - to find everyone running towards me rather than standing scanning the sea in the other direction. What the…? I found Martyn: the gull was sat on a beach two miles up the coast!

The next few minutes passed in a bit of a blur (twitchers do tend to turn into Michael Schumacher when rare birds are sat on beaches and could be disturbed by dog-walkers at any moment) and after a short scramble over the sand-dunes there it was! A beautiful, big, Audouin’s Gull. Easy to spot you ask? Remarkably, the only bird in sight, the only gull in view along miles of wet sand and foaming beach was our bird. Just standing. Looking around occasionally, stretching a little, looking neither restless nor hurried, anxious, nervous, or wary…just standing at the edge of the sea as if finding itself hundreds and hundreds of miles from the gently-lapping, sun-kissed Mediterranean may not have been ideal but “What the Hey” there are worse things in life, and if it was here it may as well just get on with being an Audouins’ Gull and worry about things later…quite a wonderful sight in fact.

I’d like to be able to say that I was able to get stunning, once-in-a-lifetime photographs, but to be truthful - and as you can plainly see - I didn’t. Much as I’d have liked to get much closer (and I’m sure the gull wouldn’t have reacted much if I had) there were still people on the way to see it, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the one who accidentally flushed it, so along with the digi-scopers and the pro photographers I kept my distance and - grinning like I’d won the lottery - just took in every feature that I could…oh, yes, and took a few pictures as well…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An excellent twitch then. And - I’m sure you’re wondering about this - by the time the gull flew off and Martyn and I had driven back to the cafe our warm baps were still warm and we were greeted by a group of people who’d never looked at a gull before but were suddenly interested in seeing my photos. Great stuff. I have to say I love the way that the perception of birders has changed from the general public thinking we’re all oddball males who can’t get girlfriends to mild curiosity and a sort of benign warmth: you know, maybe there’s still hope for the world yet. (Amazing what finally seeing a really sought-after bird can do to lift your spirits, eh my friends…)

Photographs copyright Charlie Moores, 2008.