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Hartlaub's Gull | Chroicocephalus hartlaubii
Hartlaubs meeuw | Gaviota Plateada Surafricana
Hartlaub's Gull is a small white-headed gull almost confined to the cold Benguela coast of southern Africa. In the Western Cape it is the common small gull of harbours, beaches, car parks and school grounds, and it is one of the few true endemics among the gulls of the region.
Voice
A hoarse, grating kwaar and a drawn-out, high kraaarr, repeated endlessly in colonies and at food sources; also a short kek.
Recording: African Bioacoustics Community — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
36–38 cm. A slender gull with a long, thin, dark red bill and dark red legs. The head is white all year; in the breeding season at most with a faint lilac-grey wash of a hood, without a sharp edge. The eye is dark with a narrow red orbital ring. The upperparts are pale grey. The wingtip is black with white mirrors in the outer two primaries, and the leading edge of the outer wing is white. Immatures have a brown wing bar, a narrow dark tail band, a dark bill and brownish legs, and sometimes a faint ear spot.
Confusion species
Grey-Headed Gull Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus is larger and more heavily built, with a pale iris, a bright red bill and in breeding plumage a sharply demarcated pale grey hood; in non-breeding plumage it usually keeps a grey wash on the rear head. Black-Headed Gull Chroicocephalus ridibundus has a dark ear spot in non-breeding plumage and a white wedge in the forewing with a narrow black border. The Australian Silver Gull Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae is very similar but has a pale iris and a brighter, slightly thicker red bill.
Habitat
Rocky shores, sandy beaches, lagoons, estuaries and coastal pans, and increasingly harbours, fishing ports, rubbish dumps, parks and city centres. It eats small fish, crustaceans, insects, fish offal and food scraps, and follows ploughing tractors and fishing boats. It breeds in colonies on islands, in coastal marshes and more and more on the roofs of buildings.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
Along the west coast of the region, from the Kunene mouth in northern Namibia (and rarely the extreme south of Angola) via Walvis Bay and Lüderitz to the Western Cape; common around Cape Town and Saldanha Bay. East of Cape Agulhas it quickly becomes scarcer, with wanderers to the Eastern Cape. Rarely more than a few kilometres inland. Not known outside southern Africa.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Everywhere in Cape Town, from the Waterfront to the beaches of False Bay; the easiest places to study it beside Grey-Headed Gulls are the Walvis Bay lagoon and Strandfontein sewage works. Note the dark eye and thin, dark red bill.
Conservation status
Not threatened; the IUCN lists it under the older name Larus hartlaubii. The population numbers some tens of thousands of birds and has, if anything, increased with the supply of refuse around towns. Breeding colonies on roofs and islands are at risk from disturbance, and avian influenza has struck colonies in recent years.
Scientific name
Chroicocephalus hartlaubii | (Bruch, 1855)
Bruch described the species in 1855 as Larus (Gavia) Hartlaubii; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Chroicocephalus was introduced in 1836 by Eyton. Chroicocephalus combines the Ancient Greek khrōikos 'coloured' with -kephalos '-headed'. hartlaubii honours the German physician and ornithologist Gustav Hartlaub (1814–1900), an authority on African birds. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cape of Good Hope.