Brown-headed Gull

The brown-headed gull is a small gull, slightly larger than the black-headed gull. The summer adult has a pale brown hood, lighter than a black-headed gull's, a pale grey body, and a red bill and legs; the black wing-tips carry conspicuous white mirrors. The hood is lost in winter. It breeds on the high plateaus of Central Asia, from Tajikistan to Inner Mongolia, and migrates to the coasts and large inland lakes of the Indian subcontinent for the winter (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in colonies in large reedbeds, marshes or on lake islands, nesting on the ground, and is noisy at its colonies. In winter it is highly gregarious when feeding and at evening roosts, and it is rarely seen far out at sea. It is a bold, opportunistic feeder, as ready to scavenge in towns as to take invertebrates in ploughed fields. In India it is mainly a winter migrant. SoIB 2023 estimates a long-term decline of about 76% and a current fall of about 5% a year, and rates it a High conservation priority (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).