Over the past few days, a few Yellow-legged gulls (‘Gawwija Prima’ in Maltese) including one of their young, have been spotted at Salina Nature Reserve, located in the outskirts of Naxxar. The young gull has visibly not yet taken on the white-feathered and yellow-legged appearance that comes with maturity of the bird.

The Yellow-legged gull is the largest breeding bird of Malta. It breeds in small colonies in cliffs in Malta and Gozo. Although it is resident in large numbers, a much higher number of Yellow-legged gulls are present in winter.

These birds are known to engage in a type of behaviour in which the adult bird would swallow then regurgitate fish for their young to ingest, as has already been observed several times with these particular gulls. The reliance of the offspring on the adult for food is evident in the video posted by BirdLife Malta, as one can observe the young bird ‘food-begging’ the adult.

The young gull has also been observed to be uttering a contact call, a sign that it recognises the adult as a parent. Although for most gulls the parent-chick bond is broken soon after the chick leaves the nest, this type of behaviour shows that Yellow-legged gulls are an exception in this practice.

Have you ever come across a Yellow-legged gull in Malta?