The mewling cries of gulls soaring high in the air is a familiar sound in many coastal towns. Yet it still seems strange to see these long-winged birds circling in the air above tall buildings. The raucous gulls are a welcome addition to harbour towns, for they are valuable scavengers. They keep the waters clean of garbage and of dead animal matter. They usually alight on the water to pick up their food, but will sometimes swoop down and pick up food on the wing. If several gulls see the same piece of food at the same time, there may be a noisy fight about it.
Some gulls also eat clams and other shell fish. However, they are not able to open the shells with theft beaks, so they have devised an ingenious method of getting the creatures which live inside. The birds pick up the clams in their beaks and fly over a beach, or a concrete road or even a parking lot, and drop the clam. The shell breaks and the gull swoops down and eats the clam.
Most gulls are seen near shore. They will follow ships for a short distance to see if garbage might be discarded, but will turn back before they are too far out to sea. Only the kittiwake, one of the smaller gulls, is known to travel long distances at sea. It seems to follow the fishing fleets. Kittiwakes banded in England have been found later in Newfoundland on the North American coast.
Gulls are sociable birds and nest in colonies with other gulls and even with other sea birds such as terns, puffins and cormorants. However, if a nest is left unattended in such colonies, the gulls will eat the eggs and young of the other birds. Gulls usually lay two or three brown speckled eggs in a nest of seaweed on an isolated beach or on an uninhabited small rocky island. The young are covered with mottled brown down and are able to run about from the time they hatch, but stay near the nesting site for a month or more. If the baby gulls make the mistake of wandering into a neighboring gull’s nest, they are apt to be killed.
It takes the larger species of gulls about three years to get their adult grey and white, black and white, or all white plumage. Before that time they have flecked brown and white feathers and look very different from adult birds. With each succeeding year their plumage gets lighter in colour, so that it is possible to tell the approximate age of young birds.
If gulls can stay alive during the first year of their lives, they often live for many years. There is a record of one banded herring gull that lived in the wild for twenty-eight years. There are forty-three species of gulls in the world and they range in size from eleven inches to thirty-two inches. The great black- backed gull is one of the largest, as is the nearly white glaucous gull. Both species are found in the northern hemisphere.
Perhaps the most commonly seen gull is the herring gull. It is a large gull, measuring about twenty-six inches in length. It has a grey back and black wing tips. Along the West Coast of the United States the common gull is the California gull. It looks rather like a small herring gull but it has greenish legs, instead of pinkish. The California gull is immortalized by a monument in Salt Lake City. When the Mormons first settled in Utah, a plague of crickets descended on their crops. These insects were eaten by flocks of California gulls, and enough of the crop was saved to see the Mormons through the next year. To show their gratitude the Mormons had a statue made of the California gull.
Another species of gulls which may be found far inland from the sea is the small black-headed Franklin gull. During the summer months it lives in the interior parts of the United States, nesting in marsh areas. At the time of ploughing Franklin gulls often follow the plough, scratching up uncovered insects. However, in the autumn these gulls migrate south and spend the winter in salt water along the Gulf Coast.
Two gulls nest on the Galapagos Islands, the swallow-tailed and the dusky. However, during the time when it is not nesting, the swallow-tailed gull makes a long trip over the sea to the coasts of Ecuador and Peru; the dusky gull, on the other hand, is seldom This bird nests on many of the Galapagos Islands and possibly on other small islands to the north. A single egg is laid from which hatches a downy chick. The young gulls are sometimes eaten by the Galapagos hawks.
The dusky gull is a greyish-brown bird. Like many other animals of the Galapagos it is exceedingly friendly to and curious about men who come to these islands. Dusky gulls nest all through the year but are very secretive about their nesting sites. Their main food seems to be small crustaceans.
Gulls Pictures
