On the first truly frosty day this winter, I headed through Coldfall Wood to the playing fields beyond. I normally view this as a rather bleak area, with little wildlife activity, but my assumptions were challenged by a flock of Black-headed Gulls marching back and forth between the goal-posts, and hammering into the frozen ground in search of worms and grubs. Every few minutes they took flight, disturbed by an eager dog or a intrepid jogger.
Normally when I see Black-headed Gulls, they are skirmishing above a pond or some other water body. Last week, for example, I watched them on the Boating Lake at Hampstead Heath. They were in an argumentative mood, snatching bread from the Coots, who are no mean pugilists themselves. They landed on the backs of Mallards to tear the crusts from their beaks, and then proceeded to mug one another. All the time they yelled at one another, shrieking and carrying-on. Their Latin name, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, means ‘Laughing Gull’, although ‘Quarrelling Gull’ might be a better title.
Here on the frozen football field they were much more subdued, however. They quartered the ground methodically, marching back and forth in little groups. Many of the Black-headed Gulls that we see at this time of year are not from the British population, which numbers 140,000 breeding pairs but from the over 2 million birds who arrive when the winter comes. Ringing studies have shown that the migrant birds come from all over Europe, from Finland to Switzerland. Birds are often loyal to their chosen wintering grounds – one bird who overwintered as a juvenile in Molesey in 1936 was ringed, and was subsequently recovered in the same area nineteen years later.
‘Black-headed Gull’ is something of a misnomer, of course. For most of the year, the birds have just a couple of tiny crescent of dark feathers on their heads. Even in summer plumage, their heads are chocolate brown, not black.
Black-headed Gulls, like so many urban birds, are opportunists. They weren’t spotted in London in large numbers until the severe winters of 1880/81, when the Thames started to freeze. Initially, the birds were often shot, but by 1892 the powers-that-be decided that having people discharging firearms around the capital was probably not a good idea. Londoners being Londoners, folk took to feeding the gulls instead, and one chap was noted for selling sprats to feed to the birds.
![Black-headed Gull at St James's Park, a good place to see these birds at their piratical best (By Diliff (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)](https://i0.wp.com/bugwomanlondon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/black-headed_gull_2_-_st_jamess_park_london_-_nov_2006.jpg?resize=625%2C565&ssl=1)
Black-headed Gull at St James’s Park, a good place to see these birds at their piratical best (By Diliff (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)
These days, Black-headed Gulls nationally have an Amber conservation status, a result of a fall in population of 49 percent over the past twenty-five years. This may be due to the closure of the landfill sites which used to provide them with so much food, and may also be caused by the effects of chemical pollutants which reduce their breeding success.
![By Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK (Black headed gull 2 Uploaded by Magnus Manske) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/bugwomanlondon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/black_headed_gull_2_3684912083.jpg?resize=625%2C443&ssl=1)
By Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK (Black headed gull 2 Uploaded by Magnus Manske) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
![Black-headed Gull eggs (By Algirdas, By Gemma Longman [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)](https://i0.wp.com/bugwomanlondon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/larus_ridibundus_nest_with_eggs.jpg?resize=524%2C328&ssl=1)
Black-headed Gull eggs (By Algirdas, By Gemma Longman [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
Books used for this post were Birds Britannica by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, and The Birds of London by Andrew Self.