The Gull Sees Farthest Who Flies Highest

A Black Headed gull At Sukhna Lake.

Gulls are often referred to as "Seagulls", but what most people don't know is that the bird "Seagull" is not a real species of birds. The word Seagull is just an informal way referring to any of the species that belong to the family "Laridae". In layperson's term that is not used by most ornithologists and biologists and has no fixed taxonomic meaning. A very good book known as "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach tells us about the story of a gull who is trying to learn about life and flight, and a lesson about self-perfection. The story is absolutely wonderful, though it repeatedly uses the word "Seagull" to refer to a gull which has created a mindset amongst people about a bird know as the "Seagull" and is a common mistake made by many authors
 The study and identification of gulls is an extremely vast subject. It can be difficult to separate the many different species of gulls to the untrained eye but they always have minute differences in their size, leg colour, plumage and behaviour. Gulls are further divided into 10 different genus, most of which are not properly classified but the genus with the maximum species is the genus: Larus. There are approximately 50 species of gulls in the world, depending on how different species classifications are split or lumped.

The Lesser Black Backed Gull I saw in Kalesar, Haryana

Identifying immature and juvenile gulls usually creates havoc and can confuse even the best of ornithologists. One such incident happened with me, where I saw an immature gull near the Yamuna river at Kalesar National Park, Haryana. A flock of three gulls flew by me and I clicked all of their photos. One of them was positively identified as a juvenile Pallas's Gull because of its head marks and red spot on beak but the other two were extremely intriguing.When I sent the photos to some of my friends who are also bird experts, we had a good long debate about deciding wether it was a Juvenile Steppe Gull or a Juvenile Heuglins Gull. In the end we categorised the bird as a Lesser Black Backed Gull which is a broad term used to refer to both of them as we couldn't determine that out of the both which one it was. Gulls also have different winter plumages according to which they change their feathers until they reach maturity and even after that they change their plumages when breeding season approaches.

A comparison Chart for the Brown Headed and Black Headed Gull

A very common example of confusing Gulls which can be seen at Sukhna Lake, Chandigarh every winter are the Brown Headed and Black Headed Gull. Both look very different when in breeding plumage but when the breeding season is off, differentiating between them can be a tricky matter.When not in breeding they can be identified only by a thin white ring around their eyes and to see it one must have clear closeups of the bird.
Gulls are also social birds. They nest in large colonies near large water bodies and sea shores. If you ever visited one of their colonies, let me tell you that they are extremely overcrowded and so noisy that you can't even hear yourself speaking. A common example of the social behaviour is portrayed by the California Gull which nests at the Great Basins and the Pacific Coast in USA. They are very friendly birds and may also snatch your food while you are having walk on the beach.

Gulls are also very clever. They learn, remember and even pass on behaviours, such as stamping their feet in a group to imitate rainfall and trick earthworms to come to the surface.

A California Gull clicked by my father.

Gulls’ intelligence is clearly demonstrated by a range of different feeding behaviours, such as dropping hard-shelled molluscs onto rocks so that they break open so they can eat them, and following ploughs in fields where they know upturned grubs and other food sources will be plentiful.

Everything about these magnificent gulls can't be covered in a single article, but I hope people acquire the knowledge about these amazing birds living amongst us.

A colony of California Gulls at the Pacific Coat