Volunteers sought for BTO winter gull survey

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has put out a call for volunteers able to identify our common wintering gull species to get involved in a national survey.

The Winter Gull Survey (WinGS) is a long-running monitoring programme which has taken place approximately every 10 years since 1953. However, there has been a gap of nearly 20 years since the last survey, so a new one is much-needed. The project's overarching aim is to provide robust information on the numbers and distributions of wintering gulls, many of which are of conservation concern and appear on either the Birds of Conservation Concern Red or Amber List.

In winter, gulls flock together to roost communally on lakes, reservoirs and estuaries across the UK, in groups that can number many hundreds or even thousands of individuals. Understanding where these roosts occur, and the numbers of birds using them, is key to helping to protect these birds, which are of conservation concern because of their declining breeding populations.

Black-headed Gull was hit badly by avian influenza in 2023 (Irene Harrison).

WinGS will run over the winters of 2023-24 and 2024-25, and volunteers are needed to cover survey sites in the UK, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The volunteers will visit roost sites used by wintering gulls, counting all gull species but with particular focus on six key species: Black-headed, Common, Lesser Black-backed, European Herring, Mediterranean and Great Black-backed Gulls.

If you want to find out more about the survey, including the availability of survey sites near you, or how to get involved, visit www.bto.org/wings.

Emma Caulfield, Survey Organiser for WinGS, said: "Information collected in this winter's survey will start to fill the gaps in our knowledge which have developed since the last survey 20 years ago. This is particularly important given that gulls have been impacted by the ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), and we are still seeking to understand the full implications of this."

Dawn Balmer, BTO Head of Surveys, added: "Many of our gull species are experiencing significant declines in their breeding populations, hence their conservation status, and we urgently need to improve our understanding of where and in what numbers they winter."