For a long time, it was thought to be just an eastern form of the Mediterranean gull, and it was only in the 1970s that scientists realized it was a distinct species, a “relict” of a formerly wider group of hooded gulls. Adults develop a neat black hood that covers the head and nape, offset by a soft grey-brown forehead and a striking pattern of broad white half-moon patches around the eye, making the face look almost masked. The bill turns a bright scarlet, the legs glow orange, and with the pale grey back and white body, the bird looks both crisp and slightly exotic. Outside the breeding season, the hood fades; the head becomes mostly white with smudgy dark patches around the ear coverts, and the whole bird looks more subdued and easier to overlook among other gulls.

Geographically, the Relict gull is a Central Asian specialist. It breeds on a small and scattered set of inland saline or brackish lakes in Mongolia, northern China, Kazakhstan, and a tiny part of Russia. These lakes are often in wide, open steppe landscapes, with bare shorelines and few trees. The gulls nest on low islands within the lakes, starting in late spring and continuing through the short summer. This island-nesting habit is part of what makes them so vulnerable: water levels must be “just right.” If a lake dries too much, islands join the shore, and predators can walk in; if water levels are too high, islands shrink or vanish and nests wash out. Even subtle changes in lake size, vegetation, or salinity can make a colony site unusable.

Outside the breeding season, Relict gulls switch worlds. Most move east and south to coastal estuaries and mudflats along the Bohai and Yellow Seas of China and the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, with smaller numbers in places like the Yellow River delta and other East Asian wetlands. There they behave like typical shore-feeding gulls: loafing in flocks on sandbars or mud, and feeding on small fish, worms, crustaceans and shellfish exposed at low tide.

Distribution

Country

Population est.

Status

Year

Comments

China

2017

Hong Kong

2017

Non-Breeding

Japan

2017

Seasonality Uncertain

Kazakhstan

2017

Breeding

Korea

2017

Non-Breeding

Kyrgyzstan

2017

Vagrant

Mongolia

2017

Breeding

Russia

2017

Breeding: Eastern Asian Russia

Vietnam

2017

Seasonality Uncertain