The Brown-headed Gull develops a brown head in breeding plumage. It moves between its breeding range and wintering areas with the seasons.
Adult breeding birds have a dark brown head and a white eye-ring. In non-breeding plumage, most of the adult's head is white, with a dark patch behind the eye.
Researchers fitted GPS/GSM transmitters to 32 adult Brown-headed Gulls breeding at Qinghai Lake in China in 2020 and 2021. Fifteen bird-year records were used to analyse southbound migration. Birds from the same breeding colony separated into western, central, and eastern flyways as they travelled toward wintering grounds.
The mean distance between individuals during winter was 1,040 kilometres, with a standard deviation of 548 kilometres and a range of 81 to 2,002 kilometres. Birds using the eastern flyway consistently wintered at lakes in Yunnan, while western and central migrants used a wider set of locations. The tracking results show that gulls from one breeding colony can follow different seasonal routes and spread across distant wintering areas.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Fifteen southbound bird-year tracks from the Qinghai Lake breeding population followed three flyways; wintering birds were an average of 1,040 kilometres apart.