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Little Gulls at sea off Yorkshire in autumn 2003

01 September 2004 Comments Main paper ABSTRACT During autumn 2003, record numbers of Little Gulls Larus minutus were present off the Yorkshire coast.This paper estimates the extent of this gathering and describes the birds' behaviour, based on observations from both sea and land.The context o...

Adult Little Gulls summering in Britain, 1975-97 with comments on the likelihood of an expansion of the breeding range

01 July 2001 Comments Main paper Small numbers of adult Little Gulls Larus minutus regularly spend the summer in Britain. During the period 1975-97 there was no increase in these numbers, with an average of 5.2 summering adults recorded each year; four confirmed breeding atte...

Notes

01 February 2001 Comments Notes At 17.45 hours on 20th March 1995, at East Hyde on the River Lea, 3.2 km north of Batford, Hertfordshire, I observed an immature Grey Heron Ardea cinerea perched on a branch of an Alder Alnus glutinosa, the only tree along that stretch of the river. Ow...

Monthly marathon

01 January 2001 Comments Other Bearing in mind some of the more extraordinar y guesses submitted for previous photographs in this Monthly Marathon series, such as a Crimson-winged Finch Rhodopechys sanguinea that, to one contestant, looked like a Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata, it i...

Spring passage of Little Gulls across Northern England

01 September 1993 Comments Main paper ...

Egypt as a major wintering area of Little Gulls

01 September 1993 Comments Main paper ...

Mystery photographs

01 March 1986 Comments Main paper The combination of small size (evident from the relative proportions of the eye, head and bill), blackish cap and ear-spot, and small, all-dark bill on the left-hand gull in last month's photograph (plate 50, repeated here) should have pointe...

Notes

01 August 1985 Comments Notes Pink-footed Geese feeding on school playing-fields. During the exceptionally severe winter of 1981/82, unprecedented numbers of Pink-footed Geese Anser brachyrhynchus were present on the southwest Lancashire and north Merseyside feeding grounds, notabl...

Effect of disease on social hierarchy of young Oystercatchers

01 August 1982 Comments Main paper During a study of the population of Oystercatchers Haematopus ostralegus on Skokholm Island, Dyfed (Safriel 1967), it was found that a clear-cut social hierarchy existed within each brood. The dominant young (the 'a' young) was always the first to obta...