The Science of Birds - Gulls, Terns, and Skimmers (Family: Laridae)

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

This is Episode 47. It’s all about birds in the family Laridae. This is an ancient evolutionary lineage that originated over 70 million years ago, when the world was still ruled by dinosaurs.Besides gulls and terns, the family Laridae also includes the skimmers and the noddies.~~ Leave me a review using Podchaser ~~Links of InterestShoplifting gull stealing Doritos.Link to this episode on the Science of Birds websiteSupport the show

When Euro-American settlers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley of Utah, they had a hard time growing their crops. One of the biggest challenges they faced occurred in 1848. That spring, vast hordes of crawling insects overwhelmed the crops, which had already been weakened by drought and late frosts. The bugs were devouring everything in their path. They seemed unstoppable, and the settlers were facing certain starvation. According to legend, however, salvation came that spring on June 9th, in the form of a great flock of white gulls.

The birds descended from the sky as if to answer the settlers' prayers. The gulls are coming! The gulls are coming! We're saved! The birds swooped into the crop fields and gorged on the insects. These were California gulls, Laris Californicus, year-round residents of the Salt Lake area in Utah. The swarming insects, we now know, were Mormon crickets, Anabrous Simplex.

This episode in Utah's history is known as the miracle of the gulls. The story might be only partially true. All the same, the people of Utah were so grateful to the birds that they eventually named the California gull as their state bird. There's even a bronze statue in Salt Lake City called the Seagull Monument. This isn't the sort of story most of us are used to hearing about gulls. More often, people like to trash talk gulls. They complain about them and make fun of them. In my experience, it's even hard to get birders and other bird enthusiasts interested, much less excited about gulls. These birds often get a bad rap, and I'd say that's both unfair and

unfortunate. But interestingly, the close cousins of gulls, the turns seem to be more appreciated and celebrated. So today, let's extend our circle of appreciation to include the entire family of gulls and turns. Let's learn about the wonderful bird family known as Laridie. Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted, guided exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This is episode 47.

It's all about birds and the family. Laherty. This is an ancient evolutionary lineage that originated over 70 million years ago when the world was still ruled by dinosaurs. Besides gulls and turns, the family laridie also includes the skimmers and the gnaughties. I don't mean naughty as in naughty or nice, not as in Santa Claus is judging you, scrutinizing your every move and keeping his lists. No, we're talking about a bird, a naughty, and oh. I'll give you an overview of the family in this episode. I could definitely make a separate episode each for gulls, turns, and skimmers.

And maybe I'll do that at some point. But today, let's just consider the family as one big, beautiful unit. There's a lot to cover here, so let's get right into it. What are the traits shared by all birds in the family larity? I'll talk about these common features, and I'll also point out some key traits that distinguish the major subgroups. Those subgroups are the gulls, turns, skimmers, and gaudies. We can refer to all of these birds as larids, members of the family laridy. As usual, let's first consider overall shape and size.

Birds in this family have ovoid or egg-shaped bodies and long pointed wings. Those wings give them great aerial agility and soaring power. Their tails are either squared off at the tip or forked. Turns, skimmers, and noughties are lighter-bodied than gulls, and they're more streamlined overall, and they have shorter legs than gulls. The smallest bird in the family Laridie is the least turn, at only nine inches or 23 centimeters from beak to tail. The largest species is the great black-backed gull.

This fearsome tank of a gull measures up to 31 inches long, which is 79 centimeters. All larid birds have feet with a palmate arrangement, where the three forward-facing toes are joined by webbing, and the single rear-facing toe is unwebbed. Palmate feet work well for paddling around on the water's surface, as well as for standing idly on floating pieces of wood, styrofoam or ice, and for scampering across a beach or a Walmart parking lot. Pretty much all birds in the family larity have long bills, but otherwise bill shapes

differ among the subgroups. Most gulls have a distinct bill that includes a hooked tip and what ornithologists call a gonadial bulge or gonis. That's the part of the lower bill behind the tip that forms a small bump, a pointy protuberance. The guenidial bulge is more obvious in some gull species than others. Turns and noughties all have long, slender bills that taper to a sharp point. They're pretty consistent in this. But to complicate things for you, and because nature is fun, there's a species called the gull-billed turn.

I was looking for this bird recently while leading a birding tour in South Texas. For a turn, this species has a relatively short, thick bill. So there is a gull-billed turn, but thankfully, mercifully, there's no such thing as a turn-billed gull. That would just be too much, right? Skimmers. Well, skimmers have a pretty wild and wacky bill shape. It's unique among all birds. First off, it's flattened from side to side, like a knife blade. But the weirdest thing is that the lower bill, the lower mandible, is longer than the upper bill. Quite a bit longer, actually. This unique bill makes a skimmer look almost alien-like, at least to me.

We'll come back to the function of this bizarre bill a little later. Plumage colors in the family larity tend to be some combination of black, gray, brown, and white. That many species have similar plumage patterns can make them difficult to tell apart. Gulls in particular are a notorious ID challenge for birders. Most species are darker on top and lighter underneath. This pattern is called countershating. It's a form of camouflage that's common in the animal world. If you're a fish in the water looking upward,

you're less likely to notice the pale belly and underwings of a turn or gull against the bright sky as the bird swoops down to eat you. Likewise, a falcon or other predator will have, have a harder time spotting a gull or turn down below if the ladder has a dark back, a dark back that blends in nicely with the dark ground or water below. Some species don't show much countershading, making them atypical in their plumage coloration. Examples are birds that are almost entirely white, like the ivory gull and white turn. At the other end of the gradient, we have birds that are mostly black or gray, like the black turn,

and lava gull. Lava gulls, leukophias philigenosis, are found only in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. The islands are volcanic, and their landscapes include a lot of black basalt rock from recent lava flows. This is also home to the lava heron, several species of lava lizard, and the lava cactus. So, I have to wonder, if evolution keeps churning along as it does, Could the Galapagos Islands someday spawn strange new species like lava lobsters, lava dolphins, or lava donkeys? Maybe. I mean, stranger things have happened, right? Getting back on track, most of the actual color we find on gulls, turns, and other larids is on their bills, feet, and sometimes the skin around their eyes.

These parts can be yellow, orange, pink, or red. Males and females are pretty much identical. There may be some subtle differences in shape between the sexes that an expert could detect, and males are generally a bit larger. But to you and me, there's no obvious sexual dimorphism. And I'm just assuming that you are not an expert on gulls or other birds in the family larity. My deepest apologies if I'm wrong about that. Here's a fun fact.

The eyes of skimmers are unique among birds. Their pupils are vertical slits, like those of a cat, or like the eye of Sauron, the Lord of the Rings. Every other bird in the world has round pupils, like we do. It's unknown why skimmers have these special eyes, possibly for protection from glare, or perhaps as an adaptation for flying close to the water's surface in low-light conditions. Or who knows, maybe skimmers have vertical cat-like pupils just because it looks cool. Naturally, there are behavioral differences among the subgroups in the family laridie, especially in their foraging behaviors.

And we'll get into all that when we talk about what and how these birds eat. But in terms of behavior, I should point out that gulls, at least, are intelligent, inquisitive birds. They're crafty and clever, and they seem to have a sense of humor sometimes. Another key feature of larid birds is their voice, of course. Across the board, these guys have unmusical voices. You might even say harsh or strident. Birds in this family don't make anything we would describe as a song. They just make a variety of calls that differ by species.

And each species has multiple calls to communicate different information. Here's the familiar voice of a laughing gull. Lucophius Atresilla on the coast of Texas near Houston. These guys definitely have a sense of humor. Here are some black-headed gulls in Siberia. The cries of these slaty-backed gulls in Japan are like what many of us might consider the iconic sound of gulls on a seashore. Black-legged kitty wakes, Rissa tridactyla, are small seafaring gulls that breed on rocky coasts

in far northern latitudes. They gather in breeding colonies where they yell, kitty-wake, incessantly to remind anyone in earshot just what kind of birds they are. The black-legged kitty-wakes in this recording are in Norway. Did you hear them saying kitty wake? Then we have the turns and skimmers. The common turn, Sterna Hirundo, breeds across the northern temperate regions of North America and Eurasia. Here are a couple common turns calling in Russia.

The beautiful white turn, geigis alba, breeds on tropical islands around the world. Here's the sound of white turns in the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean. And lastly, we have the black skimmer, Rincoops Niger. Here's a group of skimmers hanging out on a beach in Texas. So, like I said, the voices of all these larid birds aren't necessarily melodious, but I think I'd still rather listen to all there wailing and chattering than listen to the sounds of humans making a racket in a city, with our boomboxes, carhorns, and sirens.

Are boomboxes still a thing? Let me check. Just searching Amazon.com. here, boom boxes. Okay, yeah, at least according to Amazon, boom boxes are still a thing. Heck, for all I know, you're listening to this podcast episode on a boom box right now, blasting it for all to hear as you strut down a gritty city street, keeping it real with the science of birds. Moving on now to the diversity, distribution, and habitats of birds in the family Laredi.

The name of this family comes from the Latin word Leris. Apparently, this referred to a quote-unquote rapacious or ravenous seabird. In other words, a gull. Laridie, the family, is one lineage of birds within the larger or order, caradreiformes. That's caradreiformes with a CH. This order contains most of the species we think of as seabirds and shorebirds. The bird families that are evolutionarily the most closely related to laridie are stircorariadi and alcidi. That first one, the tongue twister Stercorariadi is the family of the skuas and yeagers. These predatory birds do look sort of like

gulls, so maybe there's no surprise there. But Alcidi is the family of the ox, in other words, the puffins, murs, and gillamots. Those chunky little seabirds look quite different from gulls and turns. But we know from DNA sequences and some anatomical features that Laridie and Alcadie are, in fact, close neighbors on the avian tree of life. If we return to looking at just bird species in the family Laridie, we find they cluster into the subgroups I've been talking about, gulls, turns, skimmers, and noughties. Each of these groups more or less represents a unique lineage. Back in the day, they were even treated as separate families. And who knows, that might be the case again someday, as ornithologists keep refining the taxonomy of these birds.

Now is as good a time as any, I suppose, to address the word seago. As any self-respecting and mildly condescending birder will tell you, there's no such thing as a seagull. Not one bird in any guidebook will be listed as a seagull. So if you see a little kid at the beach pointing to some white birds saying, look, mommy, seagulls. You should march over there and yell, false. Those are not seagulls. The word seagull is a lie. Get your facts straight, kid. And shame on you, Mom, for perpetuating this atrocious conspiracy theory. On second thought, maybe don't do that. Mom might use her phone to make a viral video of you harassing her child and then call the police on you. But the point is that sea gull is not a technical word in the world of ornithology. They're just gulls, man,

gulls of one species or another. And the funny thing is, very few gulls are truly sea birds. They aren't birds that live way out there far from land. Most are found along the coast, and some live inland, a long way from any ocean. So if you want to make new friends at a party or wherever, be sure to correct anyone and everyone who uses the word seagull. And be sure to begin your unsolicited lecture with the words, well, actually. Okay, enough about that. The family larity contains about 100 species, grouped into 23 genera. The gull genus with the most species is laris.

That's Latin for ravenous seabird, remember? There are 22 gulls in the genus Laris. Overall, there are 51 gull species around the world. And there are 40 turn species. The most diverse genus of turns is Sterna, with 14 species. What about gnais? Well, what I like to call the naughty list includes five species, all in the genus Anus. And last but not least, there are three skimmer species

in the genus Rincops. The white turn, which we heard a recording of earlier, is unique. We call this snow-white bird a turn, but it's really more closely related to the Notties. But even then, the white turn, or white Noddy, which is a better name, is alone in its genus, and it belongs to an isolated branch within the Laredi family tree. As for distribution, the family Lerati is spread around the world.

Like pigeons, ducks, and sandpipers, Lairids have a cosmopolitan or pan-global distribution. They're freaking everywhere! And sadly, I can't even make my usual joke about Antarctica being the exception, because there are even a few species that show up on that chilly continent. In fact, there's even a species called the Antarctic Turn, Sturna Vitata. As everyone knows, this bird is the arch-enemy of the more frivolous. familiar Arctic turn. Because, you know, it's the anti-Arctic turn.

Arctic turns, Sterna Paradisia, are famous for their epic migratory journeys between the North and South polar regions. But anti-Arctic turns, Antarctic turns, live year-round on the Antarctic Peninsula, and they also breed on many islands in the Southern Ocean. In any case, they stay in the Southern Hemisphere. Gulls, as a group, tend to be found in the Antarctic Peninsula, in temperate latitudes. Turns, skimmers, and naughties, on the other hand are more tropical in their distributions. In North America, the gulls most commonly seen

are the ring-billed gull, laughing gull, and herring gull. The turns we find most often here are royal and caspian. Over in Europe, the dominant gulls are the black-headed, herring, and yellow-legged. The common turn and sandwich-turn are the most, well, common species of turn in Europe. The Lairids reported most often in Australia are the silver gull, greater crested turn, and Pacific gull. Migration is common among birds in this family.

The Arctic turn, as I mentioned, is the world champion among all birds, and probably among all animals when it comes to migration. Some of those little buggers travel about 50,000 miles in a year. That's 80,000 kilometers. That's just insane, seriously. There are also many species in this family that are non-migratory residents. And still other species have some populations that migrate and other populations that don't. The Laughing Gull, for example, is one of these partial migrants. Some of its populations live year-round on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and in the Caribbean.

Other Laughing Gull populations migrate between breeding territories in New England and wintering habitats in Central and South America. Members of this pan-global family occupy a wide variety of habitats. Gulls especially have adapted to live in many environments. We find them on beaches, of course, but also high up in the mountains, in wetlands and agricultural fields, and even in deserts. Some gull species feel right at home at your local dump or McDonald's parking lot. Yes, I'm talking about you, Ringbilled, Goal.

gulls of all kinds are almost always found near water, whether a wave-swept beach or a man-made fountain in a city park. Turns and skimmers are even more dependent on water, since most of them feed on only aquatic prey. The skies and beaches are filled with so many gulls that surely we don't need to worry about their conservation, right? Many people might even argue that we have too many gulls. Well, I'm not sure I'd agree that we could ever have too many gulls, but sure, some species are super abundant and they're doing fine. Some have probably expanded their numbers thanks to

human activities. But even the seemingly ubiquitous ring-billed gull was once almost driven to extinction because people in the 1800s were killing these birds for their feathers to make silly fru-frew hats. It seems no bird species, however common, is guaranteed to be safe from the ravages of human civilization. As I mentioned, there are about 100 species in the family Laredi. Of those, 22 are in some category of global threat, according to the IUCN Red List. Four are in the endangered category, including the black-bellied turn and Indian skimmer, both native to the Indian subcontinent. One species, the Chinese crested turn, Thalassius Bernstein-Eye, is critically endangered.

As far as we know, there are less than 100 of these beautiful birds left in the world. They're known from only a few breeding sites on the coast of eastern China. The major threats causing declines in gulls, turns, and skimmers include habitat destruction and non-native predators like feral cats. And there is even some inter-family conflict among larids. Large gulls act as predators to their smaller cousins, the terns. Gulls eat turn eggs and their chicks. And the gulls also muscle their way into turn colonies and take them over for themselves. How rude, right? For the critically endangered Chinese crested turn, the threats appear to be habitat loss, egg poaching, and overfishing. Not overfishing by the turns, but by

people, of course. And speaking of fishing, let's move on to talk about what all these birds eat and how they catch their dinners. You can think of gulls, turn. You can think of gulls, turns and skimmers as belonging to sub-families within Laredi. The Notties are sort of oddballs, but maybe we could say they belong to their own sub-family, too. Sure, why not? Birds in these sub-families not only look different, there are some major differences in what and how they eat. As with so many other birds in the world, we can learn a lot about how Lairids forage by looking at the shapes of their bills.

gulls have those long hooked bills that in many species are relatively thick. Like humans, gulls are garbage guts. They're omnivores that eat a wide variety of food items. Gull bills are well suited for grabbing and manipulating all sorts of goodies. So it shouldn't surprise us to learn that the gull-billed turn has a diet more like a gull than a turn. Unlike other turns, the gull-billed turn isn't limited to fish. It, too, is an opportunistic garbage gut that eats crabs, bugs, and smaller birds. But returning to gulls, some species are more specialized, but as a group, gulls eat the following.

Fish and invertebrates from both salt and freshwater, insects, eggs, rodents, baby birds, adult birds, reptiles, amphibians, fruit, seeds, and, of course, french fries. gulls eat both living and dead prey. Many of them scavenge for scraps of meat from carcasses. The ivory gull, pagafila ibernia, is a good example of this behavior. This is a pure white bird of the high Arctic. Ivory gulls sometimes feast on marine mammal meat and guts left behind on the ice by Inuit hunters or even by polar bears. Gulls aren't all that great at diving into water to catch their prey. They mostly just bob around on the surface. Some species have learned to hang out near marine mammals like whales and sea lions to maybe snatch up a few meaty bits of fish shrapnel left behind in the water. Sea lions, in particular, are messy eaters. I've worked as a

naturalist on ships in southeast Alaska, where we're often on the lookout for humpback whales feeding on fish. The only way we can anticipate where a whale or a group of whales might burst out of the water is to watch the gulls. The birds circle around in the sky over the water. They have a better vantage point to see the whales. When the gulls suddenly swoop down all at once, look out everybody because you're about to see a big old cetacean. As the whale gets a giant mouthful of water and small fish at the surface, the birds snatch up stunned fish to get flung to the side. Pretty clever. Another great example of the resource. sourcefulness of gulls and their complete disregard for the rule of law can be seen in a famous

YouTube video shot in Aberdeen, Scotland. In the video, which I'll put a link to in the show notes, a herring gull saunters into a convenience store, grabs a bag of Doritos in its bill, and walks out the front door. And it turns out this isn't the gull's first time shoplifting. It had already stolen over 20 bags of chips. The gulls' flavor of choice? Tangy cheese Doritos. Doritos should totally hire that herring gull to be a brand ambassador, don't you think?

Somebody get that bird an Instagram account. Anyway, that's a little about gulls. Turns and Notties have more delicate, pointy bills. These work more like precision instruments. Turns and Notties eat, mostly fish. They're what we call python. Pysivores. Turns typically search for prey by gliding or hovering over the water, and then they make a shallow dive into the water to snatch their prey. Naudies, on the other hand, tend to grab fish close to the surface by dipping their bills into the water while swimming, or while on the wing. They don't do much actual diving. The three skimmer species, too, are piscivores, but they have a special hunting method, one that no other bird uses. Remember that skimmers have unique bills with an oversized lower mandible, and the whole thing is

flattened like a knife blade. To catch its prey, a skimmer flies gracefully just inches above the water's surface. This is usually done on shallow bodies of water, like bays, estuaries, or lagoons. The skimmer glides swiftly along and then dips its lower bill into the water. The bill slices through the water like a hot knife through butter. It leaves a thin wake on the water, tracing the bird's flight path. Sometimes several skimmers do this side by side. Skimmers hunt by feel, not by sight. They're tactile feeders. When that lower bill hits a fish, it reflexively snaps shut like a mouse trap. Skimmers are super fun to watch. Their feeding behavior is fascinating. Gulls and turns will often participate in feeding aggregations. This is where a whole

mess of birds, often of several species, is feeding on fish or some other aquatic critter in the ocean. They're all in one small area, flapping and diving and going berserk. The fish might have been forced to the surface by marine mammals, sharks, or bigger fish like tuna. A feeding aggregation can involve pelicans, cormorants, boobies, ox, and so on, all of them joining the mosh pit with the gulls. gulls in groups like this have no shame and will happily snatch food away from the other birds around them gulls are of course notorious kleptoparasites whenever the opportunity arises a gull will steal a meal from a flockmate they steal from their own species from other gull species from turns from small children from just about anyone

really. Weirdo alert. Weirdo alert. Some bird families have a sort of black sheep species, an anomalous bird that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of its kind. Today's weirdo alert is for the Inca Turn, Lero-Sterna Inca. This weirdo has some features that set it apart from all other species in the family larity.

The Inca turn is a... dark, slaty gray all over with a blood-red bill and legs. That's already pretty abnormal. But the really weird thing is this bird's long white mustache. It's a glorious thing. The satiny mustache feathers start at the base of the bill and extend well past the cheek where they curl downwards. I'll be sure to put a photo of an ink a turn in the show notes for this episode on the Science of Birds website. You just got to check it out. This is the only only species in the genus Lero-Sterna. This word is a mash-up of the genus names Leris and sterna. Recall that these are the most diverse genera of gulls and turns, respectively.

Once upon a time, ornithologists thought that the Inca turn was some kind of missing link between gulls and turns. Laris plus sterna equals Lerosturna, and gull plus turn equals Gern? Tull? Should we call it the Inca? Inca Gern? No, no, we shouldn't. Because we actually know now that this bird is definitely a turn, albeit a weird one. With a name like Inca Gern, Inca Turn, you might not be surprised to hear that this beast lives off the western coast of South America. It breeds on rocky islands close to shore, from Peru to Chile. Inca turns love to eat small and chauvey-like fish in the cold waters of the Humboldt current. These wonderful weirdos are also known for following fishermen and sea lions around, picking up their leftover scraps.

Birds in the family Laredi tend to be monogamous. Some pairs stay together for only a single breeding season, others form a bond for life. For example, in a study of common turns in Germany, about 75% of the mated pairs stayed together from one year to the next. That's heartwarming, you know, because, as they say, one good turn deserves another. You had to know there was no way we were getting through this episode without at least one painfully stupid and worn out pun. Sorry. Anyway, bi-parental care is the norm in this family. both parents help incubate the eggs and raise the chicks.

Most Lairids breed in colonies, whether large or small. Colonies are most often located on islands where the nests are relatively safe from land-dwelling predators. Nests are typically made on the ground, and they can be packed together pretty tightly in a colony. The parents defend a small territory surrounding their nest. They have to be aggressive to any interlopers because the biggest threat to their Eggs and chicks are members of their own species, other birds in the colony. Gulls and terns in a breeding colony will also band together temporarily to defend their home from a predator that comes lurking about. The defenders take to the air, mobbing the predator by screaming at it, pecking at it, swooping at it, and even pooping on it.

The birds are like, hey, look over there, everybody! It's a fox! Looks like it's time for the old swoop and poop! Attack! Suddenly, that fox feels like tippy hedron in Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds. I've been at the receiving end of the old swoop and poop myself. A few years ago, I was on a small coastal island in Iceland. I was out doing some birding with my group when here comes a very angry Arctic turn. The bird hovered over my head and screamed at me.

Then it swooped down to give me a good hard peck on the tree. cranium with its pointy beak. It actually hurt pretty good. And yeah, I got pooped on that day too. But I promise I wasn't trying to harass the turns. It's just that they were everywhere in the grassy pastures on either side of our path. It was hard to avoid them. Some larid nests are simple scrapes on the ground. Others are made of sticks, grass, and feathers. A few species like Bonaparte's gull even nest in trees. And remember the white turn, the tropical bird which should really be called the white naughty? That little bugger doesn't make a nest at all. Instead, it lays a single egg and carefully balances it on a tree branch. The newborn chick has strong feet and claws to

help it stay on its branch. Gull, turn, and skimmer chicks in general are precocial. They're born covered in fluffy down feathers with their eyes open. But unlike many other precocial chicks, like those of quail and ducks, larid chicks depend on mom and dad for their food. These chicks stay at the nest and wait for their parents to return with tasty snacks. The fluffy plumage of a gull or turn chick allows it to stay warm even when its parents are away. Remember when I was talking about the gonadial bulge on the bills of gulls? Well, a little bit of gulls. Well, a Adults of many species have some black, orange, or red color on that part of the beak. This is called the gonidial or ghanous spot.

It's meant to be a target for hungry baby gulls. When mom or dad returns from a day of foraging, kleptoparasitizing, or shoplifting for Doritos, the gull chick begs by pecking at that ginnitial spot. This solicitation stimulates the parent to barf up the goods. Mmm, partially digested tangy cheese Doritos, my favorite. After several weeks or up to a couple months in the nest, a young gull, turn, or skimmer is ready to fledge and leave the colony. From then on, it will have to fend for itself.

Most of these birds will mature in a few years and then return to the same colony where they were born. With luck, they'll find a mate and raise their own chicks. Birds in the family larity generally live between five and 15 years, but some individuals have lived for over 30 years. I'm not sure if anything I've said here today would sway a gull hater into feeling more appreciation for these birds. I'm also not sure why a gull hater would listen to this podcast episode, but who knows? People do weird things. In any case, I don't imagine I've inspired

anyone to erect some new bronze monuments in celebration of gulls. I have to be honest, for once, and admit to you that trying to identify every gull species loitering around on a windswept beach isn't my idea of super fun birding. But I really do love gulls, as I love all birds. I appreciate them, even more so after creating this episode. But I can kind of understand why people aren't as excited about gulls as they are about other less common, less, dare I say, obnoxious birds. But I think these biases have been shaped by our experiences with just a handful of widespread cheeky gull species, the ones that don't mind rubbing shoulders with homo sapiens. And, unfortunately, popular culture also teaches us to disparage gulls.

But there are 51 gull species out there in the world. 51 species. Most of them are graceful, gorgeous, and, if not mild-mannered, at least highly intelligent. This is really a wonderful group of birds that display all sorts of interesting behaviors. You probably don't need to be convinced that turns and skimmers are lovely, charismatic, birds. Those guys are an easy cell, but I think it's important to understand the close connection these birds have with gulls. When you see them all as belonging to one big family, you begin to notice their similarities, not just their differences. You can marvel at how

one bird, a single common ancestor millions and millions of years ago, diversified into the 100 species of gulls, turns, and skimmers that today live almost everywhere on the planet. Thanks for learning about lariards with me, compadre. I hope you enjoyed the episode. As always, I feel like I could have added a lot more information. But I'll save that for future episodes. We can do some episodes on individual gull and turn species and all that jazz. Who knows?

This episode of The Science of Birds was made possible by my wonderful supporters on Patreon. You guys keep me fed, clothed, and caffeinated. You keep me and the podcast alive. For that, I thank you very, very much. My newest patrons are Jesus Flores and Sandra Nunez, Tamara Markham, Eric Goodill, Eve Waterman, and Imtiaz Hake. Welcome to all of you and thank you so much for your kindness and generosity. If you're listening right now and you're wondering how you can get in on this whole support the podcast thing,

I suggest you check out my Patreon page over at patreon.com forward slash science of birds. I want to give a special thank you to the many people who have given me permission to use their wonderful bird sound recordings. Most of these professional recordings are from the awesome website Zeno Kanto. That's Zeno with an X and Kanto with a C. Thanks again to all of you recordists for sharing your bird sounds with us. If you, dear listener, have something you'd like to share with me, go ahead and shoot me an email. My address is Ivan at Scienceofbirds.com.

Maybe you have a comment about the podcast, or you want to tell me what flavor of Doritos you'd steel if you were a seag a gull if you were a gull see see i caught myself i didn't say it and with that i'm ivan phillipson thanks for caring about birds and i'll see you in the next episode cheers