Storm Amy kept me in front of the log burner yesterday reading this month’s BBC Wildlife magazine and I hit upon a very interesting article about the swallow-tailed gull, a beautiful black and grey bird endemic to the Galapagos Islands. The article was particularly interesting because I remembered having a picture of one taken with my trusty Minolta, my first digital camera, on our visit to the islands in 2009 and hidden away in the back of my website. Maybe I wasn’t listening to our guide at the time because the article has only just revealed to me the special nature of this rare bird. It is the only gull in the world which is nocturnal, earning it the nickname of ‘owl gull’. It is also pelagic, living on the ocean outside of the breeding season. At sea, they hunt squid and deep sea fish that rise to the surface during the hours of darkness. My image shows a bird preening its breeding plumage, its eye encircled by a vivid red ring.
But then I remembered the Galapagos lava gull, a traditional scavenging gull but another endemic which I photographed on the same trip. This is the world’s rarest gull with a total population of about 500.
Two special birds photographed right at the start of my wildlife photography journey.
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