Ring-Billed Gull

This Ring-billed Gull was strutting its stuff on a bright, windy morning along the beach. It's a beautiful bird. White feathers blend into soft gray, finishing with tail feathers in a bold black, with pops of red and yellow from its legs, beak, and eyes. It sports a stylish black band around its beak, a helpful identifying feature.^[1] The red around this one's eye and near its beak means it is a breeding adult.^[2] If a pirate with a sense of fashion was a bird, this would be that bird.

In typical pirate style, you can find Ring-billed Gulls near fresh or saltwater.^[3] They breed up north and tend to travel along rivers and coastlines as they migrate south for the winter.^[3] They can also fish, floating along and looking for food or hovering above the waves, but unlike the Anhinga, they do not dive for it.^[4]

However, some landlubber Ring-billed Gulls go their whole lives without seeing the sea.^[4] You can find them scavenging for food in parking lots, following farm equipment to search the churned up dirt, or picking through trash.^[5] These birds will eat fish, worms, insects, rodents, and more—and they're happy to steal it.^[5] They're smart too: to get the shells of mollusks open, they will drop them onto rocks.^[6]

These food habits aren't new. A 1921 chapter on Ring-billed Gulls by Bent describes them scavenging in dumps outside prairie towns.^[7] Accounts from 1921 and 1940 both describe the value these gulls provide in hunting pests like mice and grasshoppers.^{[7, 8]}

Extremely common now, Ring-billed Gulls made a comeback after their populations drastically declined in the 1800s as they were hunted for their feathers.^[4] Today, a nesting colony can consist of tens of thousands of birds.^[3] They will often travel back to the same nesting site they hatched from and will continue doing so year after year.^[1]

When nesting, both parents pitch in to help with building a nest on the ground, incubating up to 4 eggs, and feeding the babies.^[3] The baby birds can stand up and explore the nest only 2 days after being born.^[3] Bent says that once the babies can swim, they sometimes head to the water if they sense danger.^[7] However, he adds that they "are carefully guarded by their anxious parents and driven back to dry land as soon as the dangerous intruder has departed" (Bent, 1921, p. 135).^[7]

I'm very glad these birds made a comeback after being hunted in the 1800s. A bit of a thief, a bit of a scavenger, a bit of a pirate—these gulls are unique, hardy, and although common, beautiful in their own way.

The Details:

Common Name: Ring-billed Gull

Scientific Name: Larus delawarensis 

Order: Charadriiformes

Family: Laridae

Seen: In the morning on a windy beach

Month: March

Range: The Ring-billed Gull can be found in every state of the contiguous United States at some point during the year.^[9] They breed up north, up into Canada. Then, they migrate south for the winter, into the lower United States and into Mexico and the Caribbean Islands. Nonbreeding birds can also be found along the United States' western and eastern coastlines.

Learn More About Ring-Billed Gulls:

1. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (n.d.). Ring-billed Gull: Overview. All About Birds.
2. Sibley, D. A. (2000). The Sibley guide to birds. Chanticleer Press.
3. Kaufman, K. (1996). Lives of North American birds. Houghton Mifflin.
4. Missouri Department of Conservation. (n.d.). Ring-billed Gull.
5. Alsop, F. J. (2002). Birds of North America (American ed.). Dorling Kindersley Limited. 
6. Illinois Department of Natural Resources. (n.d.). Ring-billed Gull. 
7. Bent, A. C. (1921). Life histories of North American gulls and terns: Order Longipennes (Bulletin No. 113). Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.03629236.113.i
8. Pearson, T. G. (Ed.). (1940). Birds of America. Garden City Publishing Company. 
9. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (n.d.). Ring-billed Gull: Range map. All About Birds.