Do seagulls migrate?

I live in The Pennines, and for the past few evenings at roughly the same time (4-5pm sunset time) I've seen flocks of noisy seagulls heading south. I pretty much live in the middle of the UK between all possible coasts, so I'm obviously intrigued! Aren't birds supposed to migrate south for winter not during it? It's the uk, it won't be anything like spring for a good while yet!  Plus they're seagulls, do they even migrate?

Or maybe I've just been watching too many disaster films over the Christmas period, where the birds fleeing are the first signal of impending doom! 

  • I don't know which gulls you're seeing but I do know that a fair number of lesser black-backed gulls disappear from my part of the world (the Suffolk coast) every autumn. We also see numbers of great black-backed gulls arrive for the winter. So yes, I'd say that some gulls migrate.

    Our herring gulls are red listed birds.  Think about that the next time you hear some flaming idiot calling for a cull of them.

  • They do indeed, as well as making more local daily commutes from roosting places such as reservoirs to feeding places like fields or the coast.
  • Not sure what the species is. Several in UK spend much of their time inland. Common gulls are usually on the golf course or nearby fields for much of the Winter here.......People misidentify them and call them 'seagulls'. Herring gulls are possibly what is meant by the term. They too crop up inland a fair bit. Yes, gulls do migrate as has been said, and in Autumn V shape small flocks fly over here. Based on what you've typed, yours aren't going any further than feeding and roosting areas at the moment.....