Readers’ wildlife photos

Yep, we have a few batches of wildlife photos left, but they go quickly. Please send yours in if you got ’em. Thanks!

Today’s photos come from Kevin Krebs of British Columbia. They’re gulls!  Kevin’s IDs and descriptions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Common Gulls of Vancouver, B.C.

It wasn’t my intention, but in the birding community in Vancouver I’ve become known as the ‘gull guy‘.

Why gulls?

Gulls get a bad rap: For non-birders, “seagulls” are French-fry-stealing bullies or vague symbols of the coast — they live more in imagination than reality.

For many birders, gulls are frustrating and often glossed over due to their significant intraspecies variability, age-related plumage differences, and propensity to hybridize.

I can’t recall exactly when I fell in love with these birds. Perhaps it was watching them gracefully soaring in strong winds above False Creek on my morning walk to work, wishing I could somehow join them.

I’ve spent the last handful of years watching, photographing, and learning about gulls. I hope by the end of this post I can impart at least an inkling of their complexity, intelligence, and beauty. And with some luck I can get you curious enough to learn about what species you share your habitat with.

The Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) is the most common gull here in Vancouver. As year-round residents, they’re a bird many people see daily — soaring high above buildings in the downtown core or harassing tourists in the open air food courts on Granville Island. They’re one of the largest gulls in North America with a range spanning from southern California, up through the Aleutian Islands, and down to Japan.

This photo is of an adult gull, which means it’s at least 4 years old. Their average lifespan is estimated at 9.5 years, but one banded individual was aged at 32 years old!

These are the gulls I really know. They are my neighbours and every summer our lives coincide… but more on that later:

Let’s take a look at a few other gull species that spend at least part of their lives in and around Vancouver.

First up, is Bonaparte’s Gull (Chroicocephalus philadelphia), a delicate, black-hooded gull that is one of the most common small gulls in North America. Yet, despite being common, surprisingly little is known about its biology. They breed in remote stretches of boreal forest throughout Canada and Alaska, and unlike almost all other gull species, Bonaparte’s Gulls nest in trees.

These gulls migrate through in spring and fall, often only hanging around for a few weeks. Here’s an adult in full breeding plumage.

And another adult beginning to molt in its black hood.

Next, the Short-billed Gull (Larus brachyrhynchus), a cute, dainty Northwestern gull that was previously considered conspecific with the Eurasian Mew Gull, but was split in 2021.

Like most white-headed gulls of the genus Larus, Short-billed Gulls get a smudged grey brown heads in their non-breeding plumage.

Ring-billed Gulls (Larus delawarensis) are a widespread North American gull, often found far inland. They are medium-sized gulls with a fondness for parking lots and garbage dumps. Almost wiped out in the late 19th century by development and persecution, their numbers have rebounded, with an estimated 3-4 million individuals now in North America.

I find their light eye and head shape give them a skeptical and mischievous look…

With those out of the way, let’s turn our attention back to Glaucous-winged Gulls. This summer marked my fourth season monitoring urban nesting gulls in the city. I originally started to help gather data for research, but quickly found myself deeply intellectually and emotionally invested in watching the life cycle of these gulls unfold before me on rooftops across the city.

Starting in late June and going until early September, I spend as much time as I can wandering the bridges in Vancouver to monitor and photograph gull nests.

Here is an example of a rather nice rooftop gull nest.

While urban nesting seems to confer numerous advantages, gull parents still have to be vigilant as crows are always on the lookout for unguarded eggs or young chicks. I caught this photograph of a gull letting a crow know it was not welcome near the nest.

Gulls are often seen as brash and aggressive birds, but I’ve had the luck to see another side of them raising their chicks. They are also tender and gentle, as you can see here with a parent carefully feeding a chick that’s probably no more than a few days old. Note their spotted, cryptic colouration of the chicks.

As a rule, most birds have evolved to leave their nest quickly. It’s a dangerous place to be, and the sooner you can fly, the better. Being larger birds that nest on isolated islands with few predators, gulls aren’t in as big a hurry and take around two months before they fledge. This chick is around 2-3 weeks old, still mostly covered with down but beginning to molt in its juvenile plumage.

This chick is about a month old and is in the process of molting in much of its juvenile plumage. Even very young chicks will frequently run and test their wings (despite the lack of feathers) — it seems irresistible to them… they are primed to fly.

After two months, these two birds are nearly ready to fledge. They’ve grown in almost all their grey-brown juvenile plumage, with only a touch of down remaining on their heads (giving them a characteristic ‘old balding man’ look). These two were engaged in a game, flying as best they could and picking up a piece of vegetation to celebrate.

By late August most of the chicks have fledged. I often see their tentative flights as they leave the rooftop where they were born and take to the sky, experiencing the city in a fundamentally different way than land-based primates.

The end of summer is a strangely emotional time for me, as the chicks I watched since their birth vanish from my surveys. When I see young gulls around the city, I wonder if they’re from a nest I monitored, and if maybe — just maybe — they recognize me?