Gulls

Gulls is a weighty addition to the New Naturalist series, with almost 500 densely-worded pages (including appendices and indices). This is not entirely surprising, given the lengthy research career of the author, whose peer-reviewed publications on gulls span seven decades. But what of the information therein?

Gulls focuses on species found in Britain and Ireland. There is an overview chapter, setting the scene in 42 pages, which is followed by nine chapters on particular species. These vary a lot in length and depth. The longest chapters are devoted to the Kittiwake and the Herring Gull, with 64 and 58 pages respectively. At the other extreme, the Yellow-legged Gull has six pages and the Little Gull eight. These discrepancies are partly connected to how common, widespread and well-studied each species is in Britain and Ireland, but are also driven by the amount of research the author has himself done on each species. There are extensive descriptions of the work carried out by Coulson himself and his students, which are very interesting to read from a historical perspective. However, I sometimes felt that the broader context was lost; although I came away feeling far better educated about the status of Herring Gulls on the Isle of May in the 1970s, for example, I would have liked to have seen these detailed accounts discussed in light of more recent work.

A chapter on rare gulls follows the individual species accounts, which leads on to description of the methods used to study gulls, the author’s take on urban gulls and finally his views on conservation, management and exploitation of gulls. Coulson is scathing about most recent decisions assigning a particular conservation status to the various gull species discussed in the book, which is interesting given BTO’s role in the Birds of Conservation Concern Red List. He is also dismissive of the various gull control techniques often discussed in the media during the summer months, when urban gulls can make headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The book could have done with a closer editorial eye. There are a number of small slips. For example, the JNCC is referred to as the Joint Nature Conservancy Council on more than one occasion, and the (human) population of Britain and Ireland in 2017 shrinks from 76 million on page 374 to 74 million on page 416. There are also mistakes in descriptions of gull studies, which I found less forgivable. For instance, Coulson states that a limitation of using GPS tags to track gulls’ movements is that birds need to be recaptured and the tag retrieved to access the data. While this is true for some types of tags, remote-download versions have been available and widely used in gull research (including in studies cited in the book’s bibliography) for a number of years.

The quality of the photos is also lacking in some places. While certain images are excellent and suitably illustrate the points Coulson makes in the text, in others the birds are hard to see, the light is poor, and in a few instances, the species given in the image caption is incorrect. I also felt that the space taken up by line and bar charts, especially those describing historical studies, could have been better used with informative figures from more recent research.

Coulson’s long-view is, however, very interesting and informative. It gives real insight into his work as a pioneer in this field of ornithology, such as his innovations with colour ringing, which revolutionised seabird research. His accounts of culling programmes on the Isle of May and Bowland are also thought provoking, especially in light of recent changes to the licensing of lethal control of large gulls in England.

Overall, Gulls is an interesting addition to the bookshelf, especially if you are seeking historical information on these sometimes maligned and misunderstood species.

Book reviewed by Viola Ross-Smith