Distinct

It’s only within the last twenty years that the Yellow-legged Gull has been recognised as a separate and distinct species. Prior to that it was widely regarded as a sub-species of the Herring Gull – and some authorities still list it as a variant of the Caspian Gull, which itself is sometimes still described as being a type of Herring Gull.

As someone who often struggles to tell gulls apart, it does my soul good to know that actual ornithologists have trouble with them as well. They’re lucky these days, though, in being able to use DNA analysis to sort out their argentatus from their michahellis – which sadly isn’t a tool that’s available to me when I’m standing on a quayside, staring at a group of gulls through my binoculars and trying to distinguish legs, bills, and eyes. Luckily, Someone Who Knows introduced me to this Yellow-legs at Farmoor a few weeks ago, so I’m now confident of being able to separate it from the Herring, Caspian, Greater and Lesser Black-backed, and Black-headed Gulls that are also found there.

Should you care, by the way, The Yellow Legged Gull isn’t all that closely related to the Herring Gull, though the Caspian Gull is. Again, balm to my soul, since every time I think I’ve finally got a shot of one of the Farmoor Caspians it turns out on closer inspection that I’ve photographed yet another Herring. (But yet, I persevere.) The Lesser Black-backed Gull is also quite closely related to the Herring Gull (soul: meet balm), while the Yellow-legged Gull’s closest relatives are the Greater Black-backed Gull and the Armenian Gull.

Wait – what?? There’s an Armenian Gull as well…??? Well, yes, there is – but luckily we don’t have to worry about it for the purposes of this seminar, because it doesn’t seem to make it to these shores. Leastwise, Bird Guides don’t list any sightings here this year, and all the images in their galleries were taken around the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and up through the Caucasus. And… breathe.

So anyway, I spent several happy hours today walking around the reservoir and communing with nature, only to discover on arriving home that two of the Great Crested Grebes I’d photographed were badly, and probably ultimately fatally, snagged in hooks and lines discarded by anglers. This image of a soaring gull against the distant autumnal trees is very representative of my mood at the time I took the photo, but not of the towering, vengeful rage I’m experiencing right now. If I had my way, any angler leaving a site like this who couldn’t prove that they were taking home exactly as many hooks as they arrived with would find themselves departing with one embedded in a tender part of their anatomy, and their jaw lashed shut with fishing line.

R: C5, D27.