Foraging movements of breeding Kelp Gulls in South Africa.

Background: Kelp Gulls are one of the most abundant gulls in the Southern Hemisphere and can play an important role in their ecosystem. Understanding their foraging ecology is therefore important, especially in the context of anthropogenic changes of the environment. Over 35,000 Kelp Gulls breed in South Africa but little is known about their habitat use. It has been hypothesised that foraging mainly occurs in natural habitats while provisioning chicks to ensure high quality food, but knowledge on their foraging ecology during the incubation period remains poor.

Methods: We tracked incubating Kelp Gulls from six colonies distributed along the coast of South Africa, varying in their distance to urban areas and landfills, and compared foraging trip patterns and habitat selection between colonies.

Results: Gulls from west coast colonies, generally located further from landfills than the other studied colonies, travelled farther from their breeding sites (11.7 ± 9.9-17.8 ± 21.7 km,  = 3 colonies) than birds from Cape Town and south and east coast colonies (1.7 ± 0.8-3.1 ± 3.7 km,  = 3) with birds travelling farthest when foraging at sea. Gulls from all colonies spent more time foraging in marine, coastal, and natural terrestrial environments than scavenging in strongly modified habitats while incubating.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that Kelp Gulls in South Africa are able to exploit various resources from different foraging habitats, regardless of colony location and seem to rely less on anthropogenic habitats than expected.