Champions of the Flyway!

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Audouin's & other gulls - Fuerteventura #12


We managed to connect with four species of gull on the trip (which was about twice as many as we expected), with the star of the show - and the rarest find of the week - being this Audouin's Gull, which breezed by at Salinas Del Carmen barely an hour after we'd landed.


Quite how rare they are on the Canaries is hard to clarify, with very few references online, although a bird on Lanzarote recently caused quite a stir and they're apparently just about annual on the islands.


The default Larids, commonly encountered at various locations, were Yellow-legged Gulls of the subspecies atlantis; smart birds they are too, with a few differently aged birds pictured here.






We also had a single Lesser Black-backed Gull with AYLGs at the very SW tip of the island....


... as well as a single Black-headed Gull there.