Rare Discovery

Long-pursued by polar expeditions, few birds fascinate like Ross’s Gull. Discover this “rare and mysterious inhabitant of the unknown north”

- David Saunders

ON 28 APRIL 1934, while fishing between Whalsay and the Out Skerries in Shetland, Scotland, John Irvine caught an exhausted gull. Despite being quickly removed from his scoop net and cared for, it died several days later. Not recognising the bird, he informed the then Shetland ornithologist G T Kay, who quickly identified it as a Ross’s Gull, the first seen in Great Britain.

Some, however, claim a much earlier record: of one killed in 1847 in Yorkshire. This is an event shrouded in mystery and inconsistency. It has no fewer than three possible dates, two or three possible collectors and, perhaps, three different localities, all near Tadcaster, some 50 miles from the coast. It is also just one of a number of rare birds of doubtful authenticity to have passed through the hands of David Graham, taxidermist of Spurriergate, York.

Since Irvine’s more likely record, there have been just more than 90 other sightings, and small wonder Ross’s Gull has been described as a “top-drawer rarity and a prize find” Almost a fifth of those seen have been in Shetland. Yorkshire is next, with other records from the shores of a number of eastern and western counties.

Just two sightings have occurred marginally away from the coast; at Frampton Pools, hard by the Severn Estuary in Gloucestershire, and at Marton Mere, 2.5 miles inland from the Blackpool seafront in Lancashire.

How Ross’s Gull got its name Ross’s Gull is named after James Clark Ross. Born in 1800, he was the third son of a merchant and entrepreneur and entered the Royal Navy aged just 11 to serve under his uncle John Ross. Six years later, he made the first of his eight Arctic voyages. Subsequently, he would head for the Antarctic, and was destined to become the most experienced polar officer of his time.