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Lough Neagh Lesser Black-backed Gulls Tracked to an Abattoir and as Far as Mauritania

Lesser Black-backed Gull in flight in Morocco
Research · Ecology

GPS tracking of lesser black-backed gulls (Larus fuscus) breeding on Scaddy Island in Lough Neagh showed that most of the tagged birds repeatedly travelled to an abattoir near Cookstown for food during the 2025 breeding season. The first results from the project were published by the British Trust for Ornithology on 26 March 2026.

Researchers fitted breeding adults with solar-powered GPS-GSM tags during incubation in May 2025. Initial movement results were available from 13 tagged gulls.

Human-related food dominated the tracked foraging trips

The tracked birds made repeated journeys from Scaddy Island to the same abattoir several kilometres west of Lough Neagh. For most individuals it became the main foraging destination throughout the breeding season.

The gulls also used ploughed agricultural fields, where machinery can expose invertebrates, and visited towns and urban greenspaces such as playing fields. The researchers concluded that the initial tracks were strongly associated with human activity and that human-related food resources appeared more important to these breeding birds than resources within Lough Neagh itself.

The authors suggest that access to predictable food sources outside the lough may help buffer the colony from environmental deterioration within Lough Neagh. They also stress that more work is needed to identify the specific characteristics of the places the gulls use.

Migration strategies differed widely

The same GPS tags continued to follow the birds after breeding. By December 2025, two individuals had remained in the Republic of Ireland, while others had moved to Portugal, Spain, Morocco or Mauritania. The longest reported journey reached about 3,900 kilometres.

Departure timing also varied substantially. Some birds crossed from Ireland towards continental Europe in mid to late August, others in late September or October, and the latest did not make the crossing until mid to late November.

The researchers interpret this spread as evidence that the Scaddy Island colony contains individuals with a range of foraging and migration strategies. The presence of birds remaining in Ireland through winter suggests that sufficient food can be available for year-round residence, although the authors note that longer monitoring is needed to determine how consistent this behaviour is and what conditions drive it.

Further GPS deployments were planned for 2026 to expand the study of habitat use, overwinter survival and return rates to the colony.

Sources and image credit

  1. Johnston, D. (2026). Tracking Lesser Black-backed Gulls on Lough Neagh. In Northern Ireland Seabird Report 2025. British Trust for Ornithology.Primary project report published 26 March 2026. It presents initial GPS-tracking results from 13 lesser black-backed gulls breeding on Scaddy Island, including repeated use of an abattoir near Cookstown during breeding and post-breeding movements ranging from Ireland to Mauritania.

Image: Charles J. Sharp — young adult Lesser Black-backed Gull in flight at Souss-Massa, Morocco; Wikimedia Commons; representative migration-route image, not one of the Lough Neagh study birds · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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