Gulls

All 9 species of gulls on WAnimals

Each one has its own full profile. This group does not replace them: it brings them together.

Conservation status

Where they live

Recorded in 95 countries. The ones with the most species in the group:

Where to see them

Did you know…?

• Almost 90% of the world population breeds in Spain, above all in the Ebro delta.

  From

• It 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.

  From

• 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.

  From

• Chicks learn to associate the red spot on an adult's bill with the cue to beg for food, a behaviour extensively studied in ethology.

  From

• It eats fish, marine invertebrates, eggs, carrion and human refuse.

  From

• One ringed bird reached a record 49 years.

  From

• The commonest large gull on the Spanish coast; it now breeds on the rooftops of many cities.

  From

• It is a case of a native species that has become a problem: its population explosion, fed by landfill sites and fishery discards, has made it a predator threatening colonies of storm petrels, shearwaters and terns on islets throughout the Mediterranean.

Ecosystems