Gulls, Not Seagulls: Northern Naturalist #18
Gulls, Not Seagulls: Herring and Ring-billed Gulls; How to Approach Gull Identification; a Flock of Gull Identification Books; plus News and Notes
Our Gulls: Herring Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls
“Aargh!”—or something like that is what I said as I saw that my lobster roll was hauled away by a Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus). My friend, Tom Shaffer, and I were sitting across from each other at a picnic table on the coast of Maine. Just before we dug in, I had the idea of taking a photo, so I stood up and stepped back. That’s all it took, and that gull got a very expensive lunch. When we left that spot 45 minutes later, I overheard someone say, “The guy stepped back, and the gull just swooped in!” My claim to fame.
Many non-birders know gulls from encounters like that one, or from seeing them scavenge garbage or fish guts, or from feeding them popcorn. Birders know gulls as maybe the most challenging group of birds to identify. Living by one of the Great Lakes provides endless opportunities to see gulls and occasional opportunities to see rare gulls. This article will introduce the two species which are ubiquitous around Lake Superior—Herring Gull (Larus smithsonianus) and Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis).
These species can occur almost anywhere in temperate North America, so you may have them near your home too.
The American Herring Gull (Larus smithsonianus) is an adaptable, large gull. In Duluth, they are here in some numbers year round. They can manage our severe winters (and much worse) partly due to their diverse diet—they will eat shellfish, fish, bugs on farm fields, food meant for domestic animals, fish guts, berries, popcorn, and many varieties of garbage. Their population has fluctuated greatly over the past 100 years. In the American part of their range, they were hunted for feathers and their eggs were eaten; but those days are long past and they have spread and grown in number a lot since then.
Once on a trip east, our son, Lars, and I drove across the Mackinac Bridge at night. The north end of the bridge was bathed in spotlights, and in the light, Herring Gulls were swarming and catching some insects, maybe mayflies. It was an eerie sight after the lovely darkness of driving across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
The Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) is a medium-sized gull that is also widespread and adaptable. They will also eat just about anything they can fit in their mouth. The growth in their numbers has contributed to the endangerment of a couple of other species here: Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) and Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus), mainly through competition for nest sites. The Ring-bills take up many of the suitable sandy expanses in the Duluth-Superior harbor, and they are larger and more aggressive than the tern and the plover.
This competition doesn’t extend in the same way to Herring Gulls, however. Herring Gulls nest all the way up the northern shore of Lake Superior, laying their eggs on the ground, often on rocky islands and peninsulas, and these spots don’t work for Ring-billed Gulls.
Herring Gulls are four-year gulls; that’s how long it takes for them to reach adulthood. During their youth, they pass through seven or eight different plumages. Distinguishing between these plumages among multiple species is what makes gull identification difficult, and explaining that would take a book (see the survey of several great gull books, below). Young gulls have varying degrees of gray streaking, and look quite different from adult gulls.
Ring-billed Gulls are three-year gulls; that’s how long they take to reach adulthood. I think of them as small gulls, since I usually see them in the vicinity of Herring Gulls, but really they are medium-sized gulls. Because they are common and conspicuous, each of these species can serve as reference birds—i.e. you can use them to judge the size of something else you’re looking at.
A summer adult Ring-billed Gull will have a pale gray mantle (back) with white underneath, yellow legs and bill, and the bill will be ringed out near the tip.
A summer adult Herring Gull will also have a gray mantle with white underneath, but the legs will be pink. The bill will be yellow, with no ring, but it will have a red spot on the lower half, out near the tip.
Ring-billed Gulls are less hardy than Herring Gulls, and most of them leave the shores of Lake Superior from around mid-December through mid-March each year (They have just begun to return this year). Around twenty species of gull have occurred around Lake Superior, but these two are the only ones that nest here. Each winter we will see Glaucous and Iceland Gulls (but very few this winter), and in migration, we see Bonaparte’s Gulls and others. Unlike Herring Gulls, Ring-bills rarely venture out over large bodies of water, and they will wander and feed far inland; so if you’re not by water, you’re more likely to see a Ring-billed Gull.
Soon, hordes of gulls will be back here at the head of Lake Superior, demanding our attention (and maybe also food). I have a fond memory of my late mother-in-law, Evelyn Swanson, launching herself from the doorway of a camping trailer, making a sort of combination gull shriek/war cry when she saw a Herring Gull making off with a package of hot dogs from the picnic table in the rain. The gull got the dogs; too bad, but at least they were cheaper than a lobster roll.
How to Approach Gull Identification
Many experienced birders consider gulls the toughest group. One experienced birder told me he doesn’t do gulls, because he just doesn’t want to bother. Why are gulls so difficult? First off, gulls take more than one year to reach adulthood and adult plumages. This means that specific field marks likely don’t work for all plumages, and may be good for one species in one plumage and for another species in a different plumage. Also, gulls are long-distance wanderers, so almost any species can turn up anywhere. And finally, gulls hybridize frequently; some truly puzzling individuals turn out to be hybrids with mixed, confusing field marks. Gulls are mostly white and gray, and since the light conditions at the time can skew how a color looks, this limited palette can be tricky.
On the other, hand, gulls are big, gregarious birds, so they are easier to locate and observe than many other groups of birds. Their individual feathers are large enough that sometimes you can detect specific patterns (in a wing, for example) to help out.
One thing I love about gulls is how they seem to scoff at almost any weather condition. I have often walked to the shore of Lake Superior in conditions “unfit for man nor beast,” and found the gulls just going about their business as if it were a sunny day.
Here are seven tips for getting going on gull identification:
1. Note that there is no such thing as a “seagull.” Instead, there are a bunch of related species with the word “gull” in their name. See, you’re already ahead of most people.
2. If you can, spend some time looking a gulls in winter. The plumage situation is simpler, and here, most of the gulls will be Herring Gulls, so you can really get to know this species.
3. In fact, focusing on one species is what I suggest when you’re starting out. When you see a gull, ask yourself, “Why is it a Herring Gull? Why is it not a Ring-billed Gull?” etc.
4 - Learn about plumage cycles. This is where many identification attempts go off the rails. When you look at a flock of gulls, you’re likely to see multiple flavors, and learning how these changes work and when will ultimately be the key to making more solid identifications. That’s a long-term project, but in the meantime, be satisfied with the knowledge that gulls that have different plumages might be the same species.
5 - Compare size. Usually, I don’t recommend using size for bird identification. We humans are not good at judging size, and in many contexts, saying, “It was big,” or some such is a rookie mistake. You’re probably wrong. In the case of gulls, however, it can help. They hang out together, so often you can see different species standing next to each other. When a giant Great Black-backed Gull stands next to most other species, you can identify it instantly, whatever the plumage. While you’re at it, compare the color of the back. In ordinary circumstances, this color may trick you, but if the gulls are near each other, the light conditions are likely to apply to both.
6 - Look at the unchanging parts. The feathers may be bewildering, but the overall structure of the bird, its legs, its bill, and its eyes are less bewildering. There can be change in these as a bird ages, but sometimes, they can help you bypass the more intricate feather patterns.
7 - Be prepared to not know. For the reasons mentioned above, you will have to let some birds go without identifying them for sure. Even great gull experts, like the authors of the books reviewed below, have to do this sometimes. This is good practice for identifying any type of bird. You won’t always be able to, and acknowledging that is a sign of seasoned wisdom.
A Flock of Gull Identification Guides
We live in the golden age of bird books. For gulls, there are now multiple, large, comprehensive guides. These books will take you a long way toward learning your gulls. What they can’t do is clarify the field situation and conditions you’re faced with; but they’ll get you started, and they include enough complexity to approach the real-life complexity of the gull family.
If you’re a beginner, I wouldn’t start with these books. I would begin with the book I reviewed in the last issue, Kenn Kaufman’s Field Guide to Advanced Birding (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), which has a helpful section on gull identification. The top field guides, National Geographic and Sibley, also have good information about gulls, but due to limited space, it’s not enough to give you much depth of understanding.
The book that is now usually considered the standard manual for gulls is Gulls of North America, Europe, and Asia, by Klaus Malling Olsen and Hans Larsson (Princeton, 2004). (There is also a photographic guide by Olsen, but I would use that as a supplement to any of the books listed here, not as your primary resource.)
This book is an encyclopedic treatment of all the gulls of the Northern Hemisphere. When it was published twenty years ago, it was a major advance in both coverage and detail. It has both photographs and fine paintings, the latter by Gunnar Larsson, a Swede. The paintings are on plates separate from the species accounts, which means you’ll have to flip back and forth a little. It’s a great book, and I recommend getting it.
A newer, long-awaited guide is by Chicagoan Amar Ayyash, The Gull Guide: North America (Princeton University Press, 2024).
This one covers 36 species, plus seven hybrids. Its layout keeps the species accounts and photos together. It is thoughtfully presented and I would say it’s the easiest to use, except that the type is quite small. It has some great illustrations. It’s mostly photos, and though they are also fairly small, in almost all cases, you can make out the salient details.
I wish it were larger, with larger type and photos, but I am enjoying consulting it nonetheless. Ayyash has a blog, anythinglarus.com, which lists recent sightings of rare gulls, as well as videos expanding on topics in this book.
Another excellent manual is Gulls of the Americas, by Steve N. G. Howell and Jon Dunn (Mariner Books/Peterson Reference Guide Series, 2017)
This, like all of these guides, is written by famous experts. It covers 36 species, contains a lot of great information, and includes a ton of photos, which are separate from the species accounts. Howell and Dunn have each written multiple fine bird books, and this one benefits from those experiences.
Another acclaimed guide is Gulls Simplified: a Comparative Approach to Identification, by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson (Princeton University Press, 2018).
This is another book with a North American focus, treating 25 species. The authors are experts, and celebrities, in the birding world. The photographs are great, and that would be reason enough to buy the book. The approach is quite different from the other books, and it’s obvious that the word “simplified” in the title is what has made this a popular book. Everyone would like the process to be simpler. Does this book fulfill that promise? Well, that depends. If you’re thinking you can read this book and thus be able to identify the gulls you see quickly and simply, then the answer is no. It is also not the kind of encyclopedic guide that some of the other books in this article are.
It’s strength is that it lays out a path that is similar to what experts do when they start picking through a flock of gulls. They already know what’s common for the time and place, and they can make an educated guess about most birds, based on size, behavior, maybe bare parts, and other factors. Then they test this educated guess with further and closer investigation. This book may help you learn about how that’s done. You’ll probably want at least one of the other books too. (Who am I trying to kid? If you’re interested in gulls, you’ll want all of these books!)
In the acknowledgements, the authors thank Howell and Dunn for letting them use the maps from their book (above). So these maps were seven years old when they were re-printed, and now they’re 14 years old. I don’t suppose the core ranges have changed too much, but gulls are notorious for spreading around, so some species maps will definitely be out-of-date. This book uses the Herring Gull as a reference species, which works great for the Northeast and the Midwest, but not as well out west, where Herring Gulls occur but aren’t so dominant.
I perused the reviews on Amazon for all of these books, and one common complaint is that they’re too big to be field guides. When four lavish manuals are published about a group of birds, and they are all big books, that should be a clue, I think, that this kind of coverage is what is required for the group.
Dunne and Karlson could actually have been made more field-guide-size, at the expense of excluding some great, large photos. But that book will be of more value to read through, rather than as a reference, so the large size is fine. The Ayyash book actually weighs less than the Sibley Guide to Birds, a popular field guide, but people complain about the size of that book too.
On the topic of field guides, I have often told my beginning birding students “to get your nose out of the book. You can look at the book all winter long, but the bird is here right now.” I understand the impulse to check the written resource, and you may have noticed that I like bird books, but field guides can be a hindrance as well as a help. So, I don’t think it matters much that these are large books.
When I started to learn gulls, there was one advanced book, Gulls: a Guide to Identifcation, by P. J. Grant (Academic Press, 1994). It’s a great book, but it was written for a British audience, so it is strongest on European gulls, and now it’s over 30 years old! Due to my early experience with it, I have a fondness for it.
If you got all of these books and read the introductory material with comprehension, you would have completed something like a college course in gull identification, and you would have had satisfaction of delving into the group of birds that some people just won’t do.
News and Notes
St Louis County Big Year Update: Not much spring migration happening here yet, so I’ve only added a couple of species since last issue. I went owling (driving to likely areas at night and listening for calling owls) one night last week. The forecast was for calm winds, but they weren’t quite calm; I did add a calling Barred Owl. I made another run up to Floodwood, Minnesota, hoping for a Northern Hawk Owl, but no luck. I did, however, come across a large flock of Snow Buntings between Floodwood and Meadowlands. Winter is running out for a few species I would really love to tally before spring: the Hawk Owl, Bohemian Waxwing, and Townsend’s Solitaire. I’ll get another crack at ‘em at the end of the year. Up to 61 species.
There will be a lunar eclipse in the early hours of March 14th.
Spring migration has begun in the southeastern United States, and we’ll be seeing more spring birds here too (raptors, ducks, and gulls, for example). You can follow the migration on radar at BirdCast, which shows the nightly flight during migrations and much more.
In The Lord of the Rings, Legolas the elf is moved by the wistful sound of gulls, because they remind him of the sea, which represents, for elves, passing out of the world.
I can understand feeling somber by the water, and I love living where I can hear gulls. I hope that spring and open water bring you gulls and, if not wistfulness, some kind of thawing of your own. Thank you for reading!
It's probably about time I put in some more effort and study instead of my usual resorting to "gull, sp". 😆
I laughed when I read "there is no such thing as a seagull" because I heard that line from my mom countless times as a kid! This was a great essay and makes me want to practice gull identification.