Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis), sometimes referred to as Western Yellow-legged Gull (to distinguish it from eastern populations of yellow-legged large white-headed gulls), is a large gull of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, which has only recently achieved wide recognition as a distinct species. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of either the Caspian Gull L. cachinnans, or more broadly as a subspecies of the Herring Gull L. argentatus. It is named after the German zoologist Karl Michahelles. It is now generally accepted that the Yellow-legged Gull is a full species, but until recently there was much disagreement. For example, British Birds magazine split Yellow-legged Gull from Herring Gull in 1993 but included the Caspian Gull in the former, but the BOU in Great Britain retained the Yellow-legged Gull as a subspecies of the Herring Gull until 2007.