That white and grey bird with yellow legs, squawking for your French fries? Not a seagull.
The patch of birds on the pier, chiming "Mine! Mine!" Not seagulls.
The majestic bird, diving head first for a fish: not a seagull.
If you aren't near the sea, you might as well call them baygulls because even though everyone talks about "seagulls," they're not a type of bird—not a genus, family, order, or class of birds—they simply don't exist. What we're actually seeing are several kinds of birds in the order Larus. In any one place, you're probably looking at a dozen different species! Some of them aren't gulls at all, but terns whose squawking flocks can seat terror in your chest.
How Many Not-Seagulls Are There?
Point to a seagull and you might be misnaming a
- herring gull
- ring-billed gull
- tern
- kittiwake
Seagull Sorting Tips
If you're keen to give a gull its proper name, there are tips for identifying them: size, beak colour or pattern, eye patches, and the colour of their wing-tips are key clues. But don't get too confident! Alts happen between individuals just like they happen between humans, and head and leg colour depend on age, winter vs summer, and whether or not they're breeding right then.
Where you are in the world can help narrow down which types of gulls you're probably looking at, but that doesn't stop birds from passing through unusual areas because they're migrating, blown off course, adjusting to changing climate, or maybe just curious. Your quest will be a long one!
Gull ID is something birders either avoid or get really caught up in. Even a book called Gulls Simplified is 208 pages long! Maybe that's why we call them all seagulls.
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