Abstract
THE survey of the black-headed gull (Larus ribibundus) carried out by P. D. Hollom, with the help of 160 other observers for the British Trust for Ornithology (British Birds, Jan. 1939), gives a total number of 70,000 breeding pairs in 124 gulleries in England in 1938 and 6,000 in 34 gulleries in Wales. There were 145 gulleries in Scotland and 39 in Ireland; but it is believed that more birds exist in these two countries, which were not fully surveyed. The larger part of the gull population is in the north of Britain, and although there has been a great increase at many places this century, there were probably larger numbers of gulls in the country a century ago, and at many northern gulleries there has been a decline in recent years. The largest British gullery, at Ravenglass, Cumberland, has 50,000 birds—five times that of the next largest and two thirds of the total gull population of England. There are no gulleries of this species in the Isle of Man, and strikingly few in the counties bordering the Bristol Channel.
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Black-Headed Gull Survey. Nature 145, 217 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/145217b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/145217b0