Pallas's Gull
Ichthyaetus ichthyaetus
Large powerful gull of saline, brackish, and fresh water bodies. Breeding adult has a black head with a thin incomplete crescent around the eye and a red-and-black-tipped bill. Nonbreeding adults retain a partial “hood” of patchy black on the back of the head. Young birds also have this dark patch, though it is much smaller in size. The eye crescents and a flashing white rump help to distinguish first-winter birds from Herring-type gulls. Can be readily separated by size in any plumage from the smaller dark-headed gulls.
Identification
This is a very large gull, being easily the world's largest black-headed gull and the third largest species of gull in the world, after the great black-backed gull and the glaucous gull. It measures 55–72 cm (22–28 in) in length with a 142 to 170 cm (56 to 67 in) wingspan. Weight can vary from 0.96–2.1 kg (2.1–4.6 lb), with an average of 1.6 kg (3.5 lb) in males and 1.22 kg (2.7 lb) in females. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 43.5 to 52 cm (17.1 to 20.5 in), the bill is 4.7 to 7.3 cm (1.9 to 2.9 in) and the tarsus is 6.5 to 8.4 cm (2.6 to 3.3 in). Summer adults are unmistakable, since no other gull of this size has a black hood. The adults have grey wings and back, with conspicuous white "mirrors" at the wing tips. The legs are yellow and the bill is orangey-yellow with a red tip.<p>In all other plumages, a dark mask through the eye indicates the vestiges of the hood. The call is a deep aargh cry. Young birds attain largely grey upperparts quite rapidly, but they take four years to reach maturity.
Taxonomy
- Scientific name
- Ichthyaetus ichthyaetus
- Authority
- (Pallas, 1773)
- Order
- Accipitriformes
- Family
- Accipitridae
- Genus
- Ichthyaetus
Range and habitat
This species breeds in colonies in marshes and islands from southern Russia to Mongolia. It is migratory, wintering in the eastern Mediterranean, Arabia and India. This gull nests on the ground, laying between two and four eggs.<p>It occurs in western Europe only as a vagrant. In Great Britain a recent review left a single occurrence in 1859 as the only acceptable record of this bird. The species also occurs as a vagrant in differing parts of the Indian Ocean, south of its normal range, and along the northern and eastern coasts of Africa, where it visits annually on an irregular basis.
- Breeding range
- PAL : patchily on lake islands from Crimea to Kazakhstan, w, s Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia (w, c China)
- Non-breeding range
- to coasts of Black, Caspian, and Aral seas; Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal (North Indian Ocean) to Bangladesh and Gulf of Martaban (sc Myanmar); also large n, c rivers of India and Myanmar
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Behavior
This bird has a deep, rather nasal flight-call which resembles the call of the lesser black-backed gull. Although they are noisy at colonies, Pallas's gulls are mostly silent when breeding.<p>These birds are predatory, taking fish, crustaceans, insects and even small mammals.<p>The Pallas's gull is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.
Conservation
- Population trend
- rising
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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