Who you calling sea gull?

Let me say one thing right up front – there is no such bird as a “sea gull.” Did you get that?

There are 24 species of gulls in the United States and Canada – 14 in the West, six that are found only in the East, four that are strictly in the Arctic. There are Heermann’s gulls. There are laughing gulls. There are ivory gulls. And there are great black-backed gulls, lesser black-backed gulls and slaty-backed gulls. But there are no sea gulls.

There are lots of gulls that live near the sea, but many gulls that never see the sea. In your birding career you will see a lot of gulls that defy identification. These you refer to as “darn gulls,” never as “sea gulls.”

In our part of the Inland Northwest there are lots of gulls year round – and no sea for 400 miles. Our only year-round gull is the ring-billed gull. It nests on an island in Eastern Washington’s Sprague Lake in the early summer, while nonbreeding ring-billeds hang out at other lakes, including Coeur d’Alene and Pend Oreille. The new immature gulls disperse to the same lakes, and so do the breeding adults, for fall and winter.

As I indicated before, these are ring-billed gulls, so I’ll say it once again: there is no such bird as a sea gull, or seagull, or however you might choose to spell it.

In addition to the ubiquitous ring-billeds, there are eight other gull species you could expect to see in Kootenai County. A fair number of California gulls and herring gulls may be found in winter, but they are always in the minority.

California gulls breed around marshes and prairie lakes, but mostly to the north, east, and south of North Idaho, and around the Columbia River of central Washington. California gulls are widespread throughout the summer in the West, just not commonly in our area, and most of them winter along the Pacific Coast.

Herring gulls breed to the north throughout Canada and Alaska. So, summer is not usually a productive time to look for these gulls, either. In the nonbreeding season, the herring gull is the most abundant large-gull species in the United States along coasts and on large lakes.

On any birding trip to appropriate gull habitat in the late fall and winter you should expect a few California and herring gulls each trip, along with multitudes of ring-billeds.

The other gull species are only infrequent visitors to our area, with some more infrequent than others. If you were to bird gull areas frequently throughout the season, you could reasonably expect to see one or two individuals of four of the infrequent species every year: mew gulls, Thayer’s gulls, glaucous gulls and glaucous-winged gulls.

That is my experience, at least, in Kootenai County, but I like gulls. I like the challenge of gulls a lot. Honestly, however, most birders are more sensible than I am and are satisfied with finding the relatively common first three species and leaving it at that.

These four uncommon gulls are all coastal species that happen to wander inland on a fairly regular basis. Many of these wanderers are immature birds that blend in easily with the crowd of young birds from the more common gulls. Even being coastal species, however, they are not sea gulls.

Bonaparte’s gull is also available for viewing every year, but it is a small, subarctic species that is usually seen at a distance over lakes when small flocks pass through North Idaho on their way to their coastal wintering grounds, especially in the early fall.

Least frequent of all, Franklin’s gull is a prairie-and-pond species that is not seen here every year, but perhaps every other. It is mainly from the upper Midwest and central Canada, but there are nesting populations in southeastern Idaho and southeastern Oregon. This species winters in South America, so the few wanderers that we see are actually here in spring and summer.

Our ring-billed gulls in North Idaho are fairly plain birds as far as gulls go, and gulls in general are so common in all places that their beauty is really taken for granted. That’s a shame.

An adult ring-billed in summer has a sparkling white head, nape, chest and abdomen with aluminum-gray wings. These wings are tipped in distinctive black that really dominates the impression of the bird when the wings are folded, at rest. They are given some pattern by a small white spot near the tips when the wings are extended, in flight.

Ring-billeds are one of the smaller gulls, and they have relatively small beaks. These yellow beaks, however, have an outstanding broad black band near the end which gives the birds their name. They have a yellow eye that is circled in blood red, the same color that can be seen up close at the corners of their mouths – the part referred to as their gape. Their legs are also yellow.

In winter, the top and back of their heads take on a mottled, dirty appearance, as is the case in many other gull species. The young, however, as is also the case in all other gulls, are worse than ugly. They are confusing as to species, inconsistent in color and pattern, and just unpleasant to look at.

The sad thing is that gulls carry this ugliness from several to four years, depending upon species. Ring-billeds are three-year gulls, so it could be worse, but not much.

Biologically, ring-billeds are really generalists among a generalist group of birds. They eat anything. They love hanging out in a McDonald’s parking lot as much as they do a beautiful sandy beach. Probably more, actually, because what’s better than a McDonald’s french fry?

They live in open areas such as lakes and beaches, or, even better, at dumps and Dumpsters. They really like insects and worms, if eating a natural diet, but they will pretty much eat anything a dog will eat – which means it can be pretty nasty.

As with gulls in general, ring-billeds are colonial ground nesters. They prefer sparsely vegetated islands in large lakes – such as the island in Sprague Lake. In other parts of the West they share nesting grounds with California gulls.

Certainly in the case of both the ring-billeds and the Californias that inhabit the Inland Northwest, there should be no mistake. These are not sea gulls.

When I was in high school and I was originally bitten by the birding bug, the biology teacher that helped my illness along drummed that phrase into my head, and it’s one of the few things I remember from high school – “there is no such bird as a sea gull.”

It has also been my birding mantra, to the point that if someone wants to get under my skin, all they have to do is say that one horrible word – sea gull. It will stop me midsentence. I cannot help myself. I have to reply sharply, “It’s a gull, you …” There is no such thing as a sea gull.” Depending on who the offender is, I fill in the blank.

But alas, it’s a losing battle. Even my computer’s spell-checker thinks sea gull is fine. And, in fact, there are times when the pseudonym might have kept me out of trouble, especially when I was talking too fast, and excitedly hollered as I went skipping out the door, “I’m taking my binoculars down to the beach to watch the gulls.” Maybe I should have said “sea gulls.”