Pembrokeshire Gulls

In a teasing mood, I’ve been known to admit that I moved to Arizona just to get away from the gulls. It’s worked, too: I can go for weeks, even months, without seeing a larid in this state, and when I do run across one–even just a Ring-billed Gull–it’s a red-letter birding day.

Every morning in Wales felt like a red-letter day, with the whistles and screams of European Herring Gulls out the window as we woke up. Right on the rocky coast, this was the most abundant gull, always in sight, wheeling on the wind or feeding on the fields.

At any distance from the sea, they were joined by massive Great Black-backed and handsome Lesser Black-backed Gulls, often in mixed flocks with Rooks and Jackdaws.

Only in the harbors did we see significant numbers of Black-headed Gulls, mostly adults entering their lovely basic plumage.

We did see a few birds molting from juvenile to first-winter plumage, heavily marked mixtures of gray and brown that almost recall a phalarope; this is a plumage I have not seen often.

Not that many years ago, Mediterranean Gull was a moderate rarity in Wales; over the past decade or so, the species has increased so much that certain sites, like Fishguard Harbor, regularly host multiple individuals. And so we were pleased but not necessarily surprised to discover a single bird among the Black-headed Gulls on the seawall at Goodwick.

This is a beautiful bird, the second-most beautiful larid in the world (guess!). In the field, I identified this as a second-year bird, but haven’t had a chance yet to compare the pattern of the outer primary to spread-wing specimens.

Anybody out there less lazy than I am?