I am not the greatest gull enthusiast, but I came back from Egypt with a few pictures of Slender-billed Gull Chroicocephalus genei, as attractive as ever a gull can be, but the identity of which initially puzzled me until I consulted Birds of The Middle East back in the hotel room, after I had taken a few pictures of Makadi Bay.
Unlike our everyday UK gulls Slender-billed Gull is not numerous wherever it breeds and in consequence, very uncommon even in its winter quarters which includes Egypt. This is one of the few gulls I saw in the Hurghada area on the recent holiday, the other being Baltic Gull, which I was never able to photograph. The bird is a juvenile/first winter as shown by the black terminal tail band, and dark areas in the wings. Unfortunately my attempts at a BIF were not too good, but captured a few features of the creature.
Slender-billed Gulls are a mid-sized gull, slightly larger than a Black-headed Gull, and they breed locally and patchily around the Mediterranean and the north of the western Indian Ocean (e.g. Pakistan) on islands and coastal lagoons and in the Black Sea regions of Russia, Turkey and Iraq. Most of the population is somewhat migratory, wintering further south to North Africa and India, and a few birds have wandered to Western Europe, but with luck it is possible to see them all year round in the Middle East.
Slender-billed Gulls breed in colonies, nesting on the ground and laying up to three eggs. Like most gulls, they are gregarious in winter, both when feeding or in evening roosts, but It is not a pelagic species, and rarely seen at sea far from coasts. Lets face it, it beats a Herring Gull every time.
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