Ring-billed Gull [Larus delawarensis] ~ 2016 #05

One thing that I learned this year is that there is no such thing as a Seagull. My brain was a little hesitant to accept that fact initially, after all I’ve come to associate these white birds with the name Seagull as that’s what they are commonly referred to as. Now I know they are simply referred to as Gulls, and yes some of them do live by the sea. 🙂

I decided this year I would try harder to identify specific species of Gulls. This is a difficult task as not only do a lot of the species look very similar, but then one also has to differentiate between first summer/winter, second summer/winter, third summer/winter and even some species seem to have a fourth year distinction.

There were many Gulls at Deer Lake on this day. When I got home I noticed one species seemed to stand out in the pictures I had taken. This Ring-billed Gull was pretty easy to identify, with the black ring around it’s beak.  They can also have a red ring around their eye, which you can see in the picture above, especially if you click on it to get the larger image.

I realized in looking through my Seagull … oops, I mean Gull pictures of last year that I had photographed a solitary Ring-billed Gull while at Boundary Bay (on the memorable day that I unintentionally stepped thigh deep into the muck).