GPS beacons to track seagulls

Stéphane Hippolyte

Conservatoire d'espaces naturels Centre-Val de Loire

Are you sure you know everything there is to know about Mediterranean Gulls?

Member of the Laridae family (which also includes gulls and terns), the Mediterranean Gull (Ichthyaetus melanocephalus) is distinguished by its immaculate white plumage, black hood in the breeding season and dark red legs and beak. Small in size, it measures just 37 to 40cm.

In recent decades, the species has experienced a spectacular boom in Western Europe. In France, it was mainly present in the Rhone delta and on the Atlantic coast... until pairs began nesting on the banks of Beaugency, in the Loiret region.
It is found on sites already occupied by its cousin, the black-headed gull, but also in harbors, islets, waterways and sometimes even on food-rich waste dumps.

Opportunistic, the Mediterranean Gull feasts on insects hunted in flight or on the surface of the water, mollusks and fish.
When breeding and rearing young, it groups together in colonies, sometimes accompanied by other gulls and terns. Its nest is rudimentary: a simple depression in the ground.

Today, the breeding population in the Loiret region is estimated at 5,000 pairs, mainly on the islands of the Loire.

Discovering the Black-headed Gull

Beauval Nature

Thanks to your support, the project to study the behavior of Mediterranean gulls is continuing. Led by Stéphane Hippolyte, it aims to better understand the foraging strategies and habitat selection of Mediterranean gulls breeding on the islands of Beaugency, Sandillon and Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. The knowledge gained will enable us to take greater account of the needs of this protected species in the management of natural areas on the Loire.

Unfortunately, last year's successive spring floods hampered seagull breeding on the Middle Loire. The installation of the last 24 beacons has therefore been postponed until 2025.

However, the data collected by the GPS beacons on the birds already fitted enable us to visualize the birds' movements over time, and thus improve our knowledge of their spatial behavior. Thanks to the performance of the beacons, behavioral strategies, feeding time budgets of birds during the breeding season, habitats used, etc. will be able to be interpreted.

Moreover, since the launch of the program, other tagging monitoring programs on the Mediterranean gull have emerged in Europe.

GPS beacons to track seagulls

The project

The organization Conservatoire d'espaces naturels Centre-Val de Loire

Use of the money