This is the smallest species of gull in the world and is an incredibly rare breeder in Britain with just a handful of records, all since 1975. But they do spend the winter at sea in British waters, and pass through inland sites in Britain on both spring and autumn passage, though not usually in large numbers. This is a "first summer" Little Gull, which will have hatched the previous summer. The main European breeding grounds are around the Baltic, then discontinuously across Russia to eastern Siberia. I photographed this one on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire. They behave more like terns when they feed, picking insects or small fish from the water surface.
DNA studies have placed Little Gull in a genus all by itself, with its closest relative being Ross's Gull.
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