The Ring-Billed Gull {Lams delawarensis) 

 By Gerard Alan Abbott 



Length : 18^ inches. 



Range: All of North America, most common in the St. Lawrence region. 



Nothing has been added to our knowledge of this gull since Dr. Wheaton's 

 time, and indeed its numbers must have greatly decreased since he wrote of it: 

 "Common spring and fall migrant, perhaps formerly summer resident of Lake 

 Erie." No recent list makes mention of it, and Professor Lynds Jones has never 

 seen it along the Lake Erie shore. 



The ring-billed gull has much the habit and appearance of the herring gull, 

 but when the two species appear together, it may be readily distinguished by its 

 smaller size. While its principal diet consists of fish and the flotsam of the tide, 

 it is said occasionally to vary its fare by feeding upon insects and land molluscs. 

 Dr. J. A. Allen reports that during a visit to Salt Lake Valley, where they 

 breed abundantly, he saw them repeatedly subsisting upon grasshoppers, of 

 which they caught enormous numbers, not as might be supposed, by walking 

 about upon the ground, but by hawking at them in the air. 



Of all gulls, not excepting the herring, this bird is the commonest on the 

 inland waters. The herring is more abundant on the Atlantic. The southern 

 portion of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River from Minnesota southward 

 to St. Louis are the winter haunts of the ring-billed gull. They are more 

 commonly found along rivers than formerly, soaring in great numbers about 

 refuse which may be found even in remote sections, sometimes fifteen to twenty 

 miles from any large body of water. 



During extremely cold winters the lagoons in our public parks sometimes 

 freeze to the bottom; at the time of the spring thaw these birds feed on the 

 frozen fish which are gradually exposed by the melting ice. They frequently 

 rob other water birds, as a merganser or a grebe. As these divers rise to the 

 surface with a fish the gull with a dexterous swoop seizes his prey and makes 

 off with it. Sometimes the gulls so gorge themselves as to be seen flying away 

 with a half swallowed fish protruding from the bill. The birds are highly useful 

 as scavengers and destroyers of insects. 



Rude nests of hay, sticks and grass are placed on the ground, usually on 

 islands. Three buffy, clay-colored eggs, spotted and blotched with brown, are 

 laid in May. 



In Defense of Our Feathered Friends 



The bobolink that nests in New England, winters in Brazil, the night 

 hawk that summers in Alaska spends the winter months in Argentina, 7,000 

 miles away, while the arctic tern, whose nests have been found within seven 

 and one-half degrees of the North Pole, migrates over a space of 11,000 miles 



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