Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS

THE GULLS AND THEIR ALLIES

Gull Species

The Gulls (Subfamily Larina), of which there are some fifty species, are found almost all over the world, being especially abundant along oceanic shores, but also occurring, where conditions are favorable, about various inland bodies of water. In popular parlance they are distinguished from their near relatives the Terns by their usually larger size and nearly square tails, but in fact this distinction more or less fails, for there are several Gulls with forked or graduated tails and some Terns with almost square tails.

They may always be distinguished, however, by the culmen or ridge along the upper mandible, the terminal portion being decidedly curved in the Gulls and nearly straight in the Terns. In feeding the Gulls as a rule rest on the water, while the Terns hover over or plunge into the water after their food, giving rise to the local name of”Strikers"; some Gulls, as the Laughing Gull, occasionally fly over the land hawking for grasshoppers and other insects.”The predominating color of the adult birds,”says Stejneger,”is white with a gray mantle, varying in shade from the most delicate pearl-gray to dark blackish slate, or nearly black, and the head is often more or less marked with black in summer. The seasonal change is not great, and affects chiefly the color of the head, which, in species with black heads, turns white in winter, while the White-headed Gulls usually get that par streaked with dark during the same season."

The range in size among the Gulls is considerable, the smallest being the Little Gull {Lams minutus) of sub-Arctic and temperate Europe and Asia, which is only eleven inches in length, and the largest is the Great Black-backed Gull (L. marinus) of the North Atlantic, which is from twenty-nine to fully thirty-two inches long. In habits the Gulls are all very similar, feeding largely on fish and such scraps and refuse as finds its way into bays and harbors.

Off every seaport town may be found at all times a noisy, quarrelsome horde of various Gulls. They are gregarious at all seasons, but especially so during the nesting period, when they congregate to the number of hundreds, thousands, and in some cases almost millions, where their screaming”overnoises the thunder of the surf.”The nests are placed on the ground, on bare ledges of rock, or in some species among the rank grasses on islands and shores, and the eggs number from two to four, with a pale brownish, light bluish, or buffy ground color, irregularly spotted or blotched with brown and lavender.

The Gulls are divided into seven or eight genera, the typical and largest being Lams, with forty-five species or forms. About thirty species of Gulls are found either regularly or occasionally in North America, and about a dozen in Great Britain. Among them all it will be possible to mention only a few of the more conspicuous or interesting.

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