The common gull ( Larus canus) is a medium-sized gull that breeds in cool temperate regions of the Palearctic from Iceland and Scotland east to Kamchatka in the Far East. Most common gulls bird migration further south in winter, reaching the Mediterranean Sea, the southern Caspian Sea, and the seas around China and Japan; northwest European populations are at least partly resident.[ The closely related short-billed gull was formerly often included in this species, which was then sometimes known collectively as "mew gull".
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Taxonomy
The common gull was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the current binomial name Larus canus.
There are many old British regional names for this species, typically variations on maa, mar, and mew.[ The original English word mew is related to German language möwe and Dutch language meeuw, and is ultimately onomatopoeia. In Norse influenced regions of Britain, variations include maw or sea-maw, the old Norfolk dialect form being mow. The word gull comes from a Insular Celtic root, with the first recorded usage in English from the 1400s; the modern Welsh form is gwylan.]
Subspecies
There are three subspecies,[
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| Breeds in northern Europe and northwestern Asia, wintering mainly in western Europe. |
| Breeds in north central Asia, winters in southeastern Europe, southwestern and eastern Asia (eastern China, Korea). |
| Breeds in northeastern Asia, winters in eastern Asia (Japan, Korea, Sakhalin). |
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The North American short-billed gull was formerly widely considered conspecific with this species (as Larus canus brachyrhynchus), but most authorities now accept it as a distinct species L. brachyrhynchus, based on differences in genetics, morphology and calls.[ this name was also used in North America for Larus canus as a whole, so the name "short-billed gull" was chosen for L. brachyrhynchus by the American Ornithological Society (AOS) to avoid confusion with this North American usage of mew gull to denote all forms of the L. canus complex. The revival of the name short-billed gull in some of the same literature for L. brachyrhynchus, and that that short-billed gull was used historically for L. brachyrhynchus when it was treated as a distinct species in the first to third editions of the AOU (now AOS) checklist (in which the name mew gull, contrary to more recent usage, was specifically reserved for the Old World subspecies).]
Description
Adult common gulls are long and a wingspan of , noticeably smaller than the herring gull and slightly smaller than the ring-billed gull. It is further distinguished from the ring-billed gull by its shorter, more tapered bill, which is a more greenish shade of yellow and is unmarked during the breeding season. The body is grey above and white below. The legs are yellow in breeding season, becoming duller in the winter. In winter, the head is streaked grey and the bill often has a poorly defined blackish band near the tip, which is sometimes sufficiently obvious to cause confusion with ring-billed gull. They have black wingtips with large white "mirrors" on the outer primaries p9 and p10, which are smaller than those in the short-billed gull.[
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Distribution
The common gull breeds in the northern Palearctic from Iceland eastwards to northeast Siberia. It is mainly migratory and winters in Europe, the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian seas, Persian Gulf; Sea of Okhotsk, Japan, Korean Peninsula to southeast China.
It occurs as a scarce winter visitor to coastal eastern Canada and as a vagrant to the northeastern US.[ The Kamchatka gull is occasionally seen in northwestern North America mainly in spring, and there is one autumn record in Newfoundland.]
Behaviour and ecology
Breeding
The common gull usually breeds colonially, but can be solitary. Both sexes make a lined nest on the ground or in a small tree near water or in marshes. Usually three eggs are laid (sometimes just one or two). They are incubated by both parents and hatch after 24–26 days. The chicks are precocial but remain in the vicinity of the nest. They are cared for by both parents and fledge when aged around 35 days.
Food and feeding
Like most gulls, they are omnivores and will scavenge as well as hunt small prey. The global population is estimated to be about one million pairs; they are most numerous in Europe, with over half (possibly as much as 80–90%) of the world population.[ By contrast, the short-billed gull population in Alaska is only about 10,000 pairs.][
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Sources
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