Parking Lot Gulls

     Ring-billed gulls and laughing gulls are both smaller species of their clan, and are common in the Mid-Atlantic States.  The former kind is here in winter, along inland rivers and impoundments, and the Atlantic Seacoast, and the latter type along the Atlantic shore during summer.  Both species are adaptable and take advantage of several feeding opportunities, including scavenging discarded tidbits from parking lots and feeding on invertebrates in recently plowed fields, which is a joy and entertainment to many people.
     Adult ring-bills are pale gray on top with white heads, bellies and tails.  They also have a diagnostic black ring on their bill.  Their young, however, are mostly brown on top until they mature.  Adult laughing gulls are dark gray above, with white bellies and black heads.  Their young of the year are brown on top with white tails with a black terminal band on each one of them.     
     Ring-bills nest around lakes on the Canadian, mid-west prairies, and on the shores of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.  But they winter in the Middle Atlantic States, as in much of the United States.  Flocks of ring-bills often rest on large parking lots during winter, as they would on beaches and salt marshes.  They rise into the air as one group at the approach of a vehicle, but quickly settle on the black top again.  To them, our extensive fields and parking lots must seem like  expansions of their ancestral beaches.  Much of the civilized world was created for them.
     Laughing gulls are even more entertaining to many people vacationing along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts in the United States.  These gulls nest in salt marshes along the Atlantic and Gulf Seacoasts, and catch crabs, small fish and other little critters from big bodies of water, scavenge dead fish and other animals and pick up edible tidbits discarded by people wherever those food items are found.  And these gulls are everywhere along the coast, and inland to some extent, to get those foods, over the water, and on beaches, boardwalks, lawns, streets and parking lots.  Many people purposefully feed laughing gulls to watch them hovering into the wind and dropping to the ground to get the foods thrown to them.  And all the while, wherever they are, there is the constant laughing cries of these beautiful gulls.
     Ring-billed gulls and laughing gulls are small kinds of gulls that are quite adaptable, taking advantage of many food sources almost everywhere between the two species.  Look for them, at least on parking lots at the appropriate times of year.  They are beautiful and entertaining.