White-winged gulls

[Jonathan]

Following on from my suggestion in a recent thread that there seems to have been a recent influx of white-winged gulls into the UK, I came across this blog today, apparently the Faroes are full of Iceland, Glaucous and, to a lesser extent, Kumlien's gulls at the moment:

Birdingfaroes

This paragraph is a little disturbing:

Normally more than 90% of all Iceland Gulls that are checked for gender on the Faroes are females. But this year about 80% have been proven to be males and 20% females according to JKJ. It is easy to imagine that the smaller females normally have a tendency to lose the competition for food against the larger males and thus having a greater tendency to migrate further away. Now that the males turn up here on the Faroes in large numbers it probably is due to severe lack of food in Greenland. Hopefully they’ll find some food around here before they starve to death.

Is global warming taking another arctic bird hostage?

Cheers
Jonathan

[RoyW]

Very interesting Jonathan.

If the suggestion about the much larger than normal number of males in the Faroes is correct, you have to wonder where the females have gone. If they travel further afield first because they can't compete as well, then there should already have been a large influx of females recorded in the Faroes, and now elsewhere in Europe - perhaps they are the ones now reaching the northern parts of the UK?

[Shrike]

Originally Posted by RoyW

Very interesting Jonathan.

If the suggestion about the much larger than normal number of males in the Faroes is correct, you have to wonder where the females have gone. If they travel further afield first because they can't compete as well, then there should already have been a large influx of females recorded in the Faroes, and now elsewhere in Europe - perhaps they are the ones now reaching the northern parts of the UK?

Is thier a way to distinguish between male/females ?
there was 6 icelands on the mersey today , i'm hoping to catch up with them in next few days.

[david156]

According to the RBA website they seem to be being seen all over the country in ones and twos.
As Roy says, I wonder if this is the females moving further south.

[RoyW]

Originally Posted by Shrike

Is thier a way to distinguish between male/females ?

Not really. Males of most gulls average larger than females, sometimes with correspondingly heavier bills, but the sexes are not readily distinquishable in the field. They are shot for food on the Faroes so I would think that the birds there were sexed by examination of internal organs.