Audouin's Gull

• GeneralAlmost 90% of the world population breeds in Spain, above all in the Ebro delta.
• conservaciónIt is a gull all but endemic to the Mediterranean, far scarcer than other gulls, and depends heavily on colonies concentrated on a handful of islands and deltas.
• It went from fewer than a thousand pairs in the 1960s to more than twenty thousand, and Spain came to hold 90% of the world population: it is one of the greatest recoveries of a seabird in Europe.
• Its success depended on fishery discards in the Ebro delta, and restrictions on those discards, together with the arrival of foxes at the colony, have caused it to disperse and to decline again.
• It is one of the few gulls that hunts at night out at sea: it chases pelagic fish that rise to the surface in the dark, behaviour uncommon in its family.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat and environment

Islets, salt pans and coasts of the western Mediterranean and the nearby Atlantic

Sexual maturity

3 years

Gestation / incubation

28 days of incubation

Litter / clutch size

3 eggs

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Ichthyaetus audouinii