So it boils down to confusion about different types of gull and the names given to them. Yes, here in Calgary you can go to Peter’s Drive-Inn (right off the TransCanada) and watch franklin’s gulls fight over you fries in the parking lot hundreds of miles from anything you’d even call a lake. Then drive out to Vancouver and see gulls that look almost exactly the same and not even be able to spot the difference - I’ve watched gulls in both areas.
Then again, when I was a kid and went to the river we called any kind of plants growing in the water at all “seaweed”; even though we were just east of the rockies.
I think you’re getting mixed up with the ancient Greek/Sicilian legend of the halcyon (which is what they called the kingfisher). The halcyon days were a period of calm and prosperity before the winter solstice when the bird was supposed to incubate its eggs on the surface of the sea.
Kingfishers don’t really do that – most species nest in holes in the river bank.
The answers given so far about “seagull” being a misnomer are correct. They are only called that because English-speakers originally found them near the sea coasts of Britain, but many species are opportunist feeders and will go wherever the food is. As humans have created large sources of free food far from their original habitat, the gulls have spread inland. I’ve never seen members of the Laridae called “seagulls” in an ornithologist’s guide – it’s always just “gulls”.
BTW, if you ever see gulls’ eggs on a menu, you might want to remember where they may have eatn and that the eggs are likely to be full of salmonella.
gluria, some seagulls migrate. Next time find out what kind of gull it is & I can find their migration pattern. Im sure Colibri would be more than happy to write on this too.
I’ve been under the misunderstanding that being a SEAgull had something to do with the sea. duh! :smack: Yes, I’m close enough to Lake Michigan that gulls would likely be around. I’m glad to know the gulls flying around the mall are not just lost!
We’ve got gulls here in Utah. They live at the landfills. We also have pelicans on the Great Salt Lake and occasionally on Utah Lake. I hear there are pelicans on Jackson Lake at the foot of the Tetons. There’s also a single South American flamingo on the Great Salt Lake. He escaped from either the Hogle zoo or Tracy aviary and is called “Pink Floyd”.
**Birds Of Indiana ** shows gulls, along with pelicans, in the “accidental birds” section. I sail on a lake near Muncie that’s only a mile by three miles. In most years, a few gulls live there. I haven’t seen a pelican in Indiana, but Great Blue Herons work the river a mile from my house.
“I pity the poor pelican;
Its beak can hold more than its belly can.” - Ogden Nash
There are two pelican species found in NA, the brown pelican (which has been the only one in SC, where I live, until recently) and the white pelican (my book calls it the American white pelican). Any gulls in Utah would be the white pelican, which is much more whiter than the brown. In recent years, the white pelican has been moving into the “Lowcountry” and has been sighted just SE of Charleston.
Gulls in Utah can be of several different species, herring, Franklins, ring-billed, and the California gull.
Is ‘seagulls’ really a such a grievous misnomer? or is it just a generic term? - If I visit the beach and see a variety of white screeching birds, I am likely to call them seagulls; that some anoraked twitcher knows a herring gull from a ring-billed gull and knows that ‘some gulls don’t actually live near the sea’ is pretty much irrelevant to the man in the street. ‘Seagull’ is not an incorrect term because it isn’t trying to be scientifically precise.
Grievous – no. Misleading – yes. Witness the OP’s confusion.
Another good example might be “shore birds.” You’ll hear birders use this, but there are plenty of example of such that are frequently found far from any shore.
The trouble is that a generic term can useful, even when imprecise. But in this case, the term “gull” seems to work better than “seagull.”
Several errors here:
[ul][li]The correct quote is[/li]
A wonderful bird is the Pelican,
His bill can hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week;
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.
[li]It was written by Dixon Lanier Merritt, although it’s often falsely attributed to Nash.[/li][li]A pelican isn’t a gull any more than a horse is a cow.[/ul][/li]Mangetout: Trust me, you don’t need to be an anorak to tell one kind of shitehawk from another.
BTW, in case anyone remembers the '80s band A Flock of Seagulls, I recall an interview with some of their fans waiting outside a concert venue who asked the interviewer what a flock of seagulls was. They were somewhere in the heartland if memory serves but I wasn’t really paying attention.
<nitpick>
I was told by an avid bird-watcher and avian expert that there is no such thing as a “seagull.” There are lots of types of gulls, some of which happen to live near the ocean. You will see various types of gulls at the seaside. </nitpick>
