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The food taken by gulls includes fish, and marine and freshwater invertebrates, both alive and already dead; terrestrial arthropods and invertebrates such as insects and earthworms; rodents, eggs, carrion, offal, reptiles, amphibians, seeds, fruit, human refuse, and even other birds. No gull species is a single-prey specialist, and no gull ...
Species-level taxonomic decisions adopted in the book are as follows: American herring gull (Larus smithsonianus) is treated as a separate species from European herring gull (L. argentatus) Yellow-legged gull (L. michahellis) (including the form atlantis) and Armenian gull (L. armenicus) are treated as separate species from the European herring ...
The genus name is from Latin Larus, which refers to a gull or other large seabird. The species name smithsonianus commemorates English chemist James Smithson whose £100,000 bequest enabled the foundation of the institution that bears his name. [2] The taxonomy of the herring gull group is very complicated and much is still controversial and ...
The laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) is a medium-sized gull of North and South America. Named for its laugh-like call, it is an opportunistic omnivore and scavenger . It breeds in large colonies mostly along the Atlantic coast of North America, the Caribbean , and northern South America.
The common gull (Larus canus) is a medium-sized gull that breeds in cool temperate regions of the Palearctic from Iceland and Scotland east to Kamchatka in the Russian Far East. Most common gulls migrate further south in winter, reaching the Mediterranean Sea, the southern Caspian Sea, and the seas around China and Japan; northwest European ...
Many of its species are abundant and well-known birds in their ranges. Until about 2005–2007, most gulls were placed in this genus, but this arrangement is now known to be polyphyletic , leading to the resurrection of the genera Chroicocephalus , Ichthyaetus , Hydrocoloeus , and Leucophaeus for many other species formerly included in Larus .
The South Bay California gull population has grown from less than 1,000 breeding birds in 1982 to over 33,000 in 2006. This population boom has resulted in large resident flocks of gulls that will opportunistically prey on other species, particularly the eggs and nestlings of other birds.
The species was first described by Scottish naturalist John Richardson in 1831 as the 'short-billed mew gull', Larus brachyrhynchus. [2]Though some authorities, including the American Ornithologist's Union from 1931 onwards, have long considered brachyrhynchus to be a subspecies of the common gull, others have recognized the two as distinct species. [3]