Little Gull
Hydrocoloeus minutus
Smallest gull in the world. Compact with short legs, short rounded wings, and small bill. Breeding adults have black head, pale gray back, white wingtips, and blackish underwings. Nonbreeding adults have a black ear patch and smudgy cap. Immatures are similar to nonbreeding adults but with a black “M”-shaped pattern on the upperwing, especially noticeable in flight. When perched, this looks like a thick horizontal stripe across the wing and shoulder. Primarily a Eurasian species, breeding in marshy wetlands and wintering offshore or in coastal waters. Uncommon to rare in North America, where typically found singly among flocks of Bonaparte’s Gulls on lakes, beaches, estuaries, or bays. Note adult Little Gull's smaller size, white wingtips, dark underwings, and more rounded wings compared to Bonaparte's.
Identification
The little gull has a body length of 24 to 28 cm (9.4 to 11.0 in) and a wing span of 62 to 69 cm (24 to 27 in), making it the smallest gull species in the world. The adults in breeding plumage have a black hood, dark red bill, bright red legs and a rosy flush to the underside. In non-breeding plumage the adults have a black cap and spot on the ear, white underparts, a black bill and the red on the legs is duller. In all plumages the adults have a pale grey back and upperwings with white primaries contrasting with very dark grey underwing. The juveniles have large areas of blackish colour on the back and head and in flight they have a dark "w" pattern on the upperwings with white underwings. By their first winter the head and body are similar to those of an adult but the upperwing pattern is retained. By their second year they have become very similar to the adults but have some black primary feathers.
Taxonomy
The little gull was first formally described as Larus minutus in 1776 by the German ornithologist Peter Simon Pallas with its type locality given as Berezovo, Tobolsk in Siberia. In 1829, Johann Jakob Kaup proposed the genus Hydrocoloeus for this species and George Robert Gray formally designated Larus minutus as the type species of the genus. Hydrocoloeus minutus is the binomial accepted for this species and it is classified in the family Laridae, the gulls and terns, within the order Charadriiformes.
- Scientific name
- Hydrocoloeus minutus
- Authority
- (Pallas, 1776)
- Order
- Charadriiformes
- Family
- Laridae
- Genus
- Hydrocoloeus
Range and habitat
The little gull has a wide Palearctic distribution breeding from northern Scandinavia and the eastern Baltic Sea to eastern Siberia. They also breed in North America around the Great Lakes. It is a migratory species which winters along the coasts of Europe as far south as the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas. They are uncommon in the western Pacific. In North America they winter along the Atlantic coasts in small numbers, as far south as the Carolinas. In the early 21st Century non-breeding birds have summered in western Europe in increasing numbers and in 2016 they successfully nested for the first time in Great Britain at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reserve at Loch of Strathbeg reserve in Aberdeenshire. The little gull nests in areas of dense vegetation where there are emergent or plants with floating leaves in shallow freshwater bodies, slow-moving rivers, marshes and bogs, occasionally using costal lagoons or other brackish water habitats. When it is migrating this species is coastal but may be found inland in some conditions. They also winter on the coast where there are sand and mud substrates and at river mouths and even out to sea. They may be attracted to sewage outfalls.
- Breeding range
- PAL : Baltic region of e, n Europe to w Siberia and n Kazakhstan, nw, nc Mongolia (rare); Siberia e of Lake Baikal to Sea of Okhotsk and ne China; rare Great Lakes, Hudson and James bays (ec Canada)
- Non-breeding range
- e North Atlantic coasts, North, Mediterranean, Baltic, Black, and Caspian seas; w North Atlantic coast from New England to North Carolina
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Conservation
- Population trend
- rising
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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