Slender-billed Gull

How to identify

Field marks

1. Head and breast white; body pale gray
2. Bill dark red; head and bill long, slender and tapering
3. Tips of primaries black
4. Legs dark red; neck appears long

Male, female and young

First-year juvenile has a black band at the tail tip and dark areas on the wings.

Similar species

Black-headed Gull

Slender-billed Gull is slightly larger than Black-headed Gull and has no black hood in summer.

Where and when it's recorded

Busiest months: March–April · Most records: Israel, Spain, Greece

Slender-billed Gull has been recorded at 461 of the 8,276 birding hotspots we track, in 67 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. International Birding and Research Center Eilat (IBRCE)Israel4,479 records
2. Eilat – KM20 Flamingo Pools 20Israel3,621 records
3. Desembocadura del Guadalhorce – ÁreaSpain2,648 records

Countries and regions with the most records

IsraelSpainGreeceTürkiyeUnited Arab EmiratesKuwaitPortugalIndia

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The slender-billed gull (Chroicocephalus genei) is a mid-sized gull which breeds very locally around the Mediterranean and the north of the western Indian Ocean (e.g. Pakistan) on islands and coastal lagoons. Most of the population is somewhat migratory, wintering further south to as far as North Africa and India.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions