Gull Lovers Travels
As many people will know, some years ago I set out to see every species of gull in the world, and, having achieved my goal, wrote an article about it in Birdwatch magazine. The heading is misleading, I don't love gulls, it's a poor attempt at a pun. My reason was that only about six families of birds occur on every continent, and I used it as a focus of where to travel in the world as I had decided that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, having recently re-married and finding Ann to be just as interested as I was. I had already seen two difficult species on Galapagos, Lava and Swallow-tailed, although Ann and I saw Swallow-tailed again about thirty years later, feeding at night using the lights of a cruise ship. Galapagos and Ecuador was my first trip abroad, I had a good job and was able to take holidays whenever I wanted, although in retrospect a little bit more experience of foreign birding could have been worthwhile.
When I made the decision to see all the gulls there were 48 species, and I finally accomplished it in 1999, Olrog's Gull being the last. But it had proved to be an excellent plan, as well as visiting every continent we had seen many other birds, waders in particular. We saw Spoon-billed Sandpiper and Black Stilt years ago, but most of all, a great variety. (We hadn't needed to visit Antarctica but the Kelp Gulls there are a different race, so it was a good excuse). Two species I have only ever seen in the UK, Ivory and Ross's, but the two most difficult gulls to see are Saunders and Relict. Saunders was in fact easy, a few winter in Hong Kong, and in those days many trips went to Mai Po in the hope of seeing rare waders. Relict was a different story. I had seen a few trips to China and Mongolia, but they were hugely expensive, and in 1992 no-one was aware of wintering birds on Happy Island near Bedaihe. Then, just after the break-up of the Soviet Union, a new company, Russian Nature Tours, appeared, run by Algis Kynstautus. They ran a tour to Kazakhstan which visited a Relict Gull colony. The colony was on an island in Lake Alakol, where studies in 1971 had shown that it was a good species and not an Eastern race of Mediterranean Gull (as first described in 1931). The tour did not go to the island itself but birds visited the lake shore, however, on our arrival researchers told us they had not seen any birds that year. This was the first time I had faced the possibility of a dip, and I tried to convince myself the trip was worth it to see Ibisbill, Saxaul Sparrow and Pallas's Gull (which it was, of course). However, arrangements were made to leave me with the researchers for a couple of days so I could visit the island. That in itself was not certain, since capricious weather and a small boat don't mix, but in the event whilst the group continued birding the next day I was given the services of a truck and driver to search the lake shore. It took some time but after visiting various parts of the lake shore I found a small group feeding. Success at last!, and we were able to take the whole group back that evening so everyone saw them.
A few years later they deserted the colony, and whilst they have returned in small numbers quite recently, most bird tours don't visit as it is a long way from the rest of the usual sites. Co-incidentally, I revisited Kazakhstan a few years ago with Birdfinders, and our leader, Sveta, had been at university with Algis, birding is indeed a small world! Switch to the present, as they say, and my trip to Mongolia allowed me to visit another colony, again somewhere few tours go as it's so far from other birding areas. This enabled me to finally get some decent photos, and we watched their comings and goings for about an hour, including breeding displays.
Mongolia also provided me with the latest "new" species of gull, Mongolian. I think I saw these in Hong Kong, but they were then included in Herring Gull (not even Vega!) but my only photo wasn't a Mongolian Gull, so I was able to correct that also. Most of these species have Pallas's Gulls in the same area, I originally went to Goa to see them, but I never tire of seeing such an impressive species. Others around were the ubiquitous Black-headed Gulls, a few Brown-headed, Common (heinei), and, rare in Mongolia, Slender-billed. If anyone is interested in a tour report for that trip, with more of my photos, this link should do it-
On my website I have photographs of every gull, plus most terns, some aren't best quality because they were taken anything up to forty years ago.
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