These last three or four weeks the gullery upstream of Cardigan has been thronging. It’s on a long sandbank where the Afon Teifi curves west before twisting and roiling past old wharves to make its last seaward dash. Settled into the grass of Rosehill Marsh with telescope and tripod, I’ve been particularly focused on the lesser black-backed gull (larus fuscus) and its slightly larger near-relative the silvermew. (Larus argentatus is usually referred to as the herring gull. I much prefer the older, more poetic name, which is a direct translation of the Linnaean.) I’ve watched the ritualised courtship, the aggressive tussles, the beak-wrestlings and displays of the males, the incessant territorial disputes at this season.
I call my area of study a sandbank. These last few years it’s seen a steady greening, a binding web of vegetation, increased alluvial deposit. It’s received flotsam from the tidal seethe of the river and its propensity for periodic flooding. Here crates, cartons, plastic containers – desirable bird-shelters! – have come to rest. Together with the spreading vegetation and access to open sea two miles downstream, they’ve made this fluvial feature a thriving breeding site for the laridae (gulls) – one of my favourite bird families. “Yr wylan deg ar lanw dioer, / Unlliw ag eiry neu wenlloer” (The fine gull on a warm tide-flow, / One colour with snow and white moon), wrote Dafydd ap Gwilym – Chaucer’s contemporary, peerless among medieval Welsh lyricists.
Gulls are majestic birds. Dafydd’s description best applies to ivory gulls, occasional visitors from the High Arctic to Wales. Identification not only of species but also of generations between these large, white-headed gulls – particularly since recent taxonomic revisions – is a notorious area of ornithological difficulty. As with train-spotters in a different era, appearance of a rarity causes great excitement among watchers at harbours or refuse-tips. My favourite gull is probably larus fuscus: for the male’s skirlingly resonant calls, his buoyant flight, meticulous courtship rituals; and the female’s soft croonings as they beg for food. On their longevity, WH Hudson, most observant of British bird-writers, thought they may live for a century. I hope he’s right.
