suggested that the birds wintering on Ethiopian Rift Valley lakes (Ash 
and Ashford 1977) reach this area via the Red Sea. However, it cannot be 
excluded that there is a link between the southern Egyptian Nile Valley 
and Lake Nasser records and the Ethiopian wintering area, via the Nile 
and its tributaries. 
1 am grateful to Peter Meininger for commenting on a draft of this note and for 
supplying literature. 
References 
Ash, JS and Ashford, OM 1977 Great Black-headed Gulls Lams ichythaetus [sic] 
and Red-necked Phalaropes Phalaropus hbatus inland in Ethiopia. J. East Afr. Nat. 
Hist. Soc. Nat. Mus. 31 (162):l-3. 
Cramp, S and Simmons, KEL (cds) 19893 The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Vol 
3. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 
Goodman, SM and Meininger, PL (eds) 1989. The Birds of Egypt. Oxford University 
Press, Oxford. 
Hoogendoom, W 1991. Gull Records from the northern Egyptian Red Sea coasts 
in January and February 1989. OSME Bull. 26:32- 
GuU records from the northern 
Egyptian Red Sea coasts in January 
and February 1989 
Ted Hoogendoorn 
On a trip through Egypt from 18 January to 8 February 1989, 1 observed 
1 1 species of gulls on the northern Red Sea coasts. According to Goodman 
and Meininger (1989), two of these have not been recorded in Egypt 
before. Several other species were found in unprecedented numbers or 
at out-of-range localities. These records may be related to the 1988/89 
winter weather, which was unusually cold, according to local inhabitants. 
The literature does not provide many clues to the age classes of gulls 
wintering in the area. The general scarcity of gulls and other seabirds in 
the area, as compared witih that in western Europe, was striking. Only 
Suez and Hurghada hosted concentrations of up to 1,000 individuals. 
Elsewhere, numbers were considerably lower, and along many stretches 
of coastal road not a single seabird could be found. 
32 
