Gulled
During many, many years spent watching birds, I’ve discovered something about myself: I don’t love some kinds of birds as much as I do others.
I’m not proud of this. After all, I’m devoted to nature and the environment, so all wild creatures should be equal in my eyes. But the truth is that some are more equal than others.
For example, I love warblers, those tiny, candy-colored balls of energy that flood through local forests twice each year on their way to and from their nesting grounds. Other birders find warblers hard to both follow and identify, but I see them as cheery, active symbols of two beautiful seasons in our region. And, with about thirty species passing through this neck of the woods each year, I find figuring out which is which a fascinating and fulfilling challenge.
I also like jays, though for different reasons. They’re big, bold, noisy, and usually easy to see. There are just ten jay species in the U.S., rarely more than one or two in any region, which makes most easy to identify. I especially admire the familiar Blue Jay, the only kind we have in most of New York, because it seems like our kind of bird: One that expresses its opinions loudly and never takes any crap from anybody.
I even like sparrows, because—
Wait. I seem to have gone offtrack here. This column isn’t supposed to be about birds I love, but about ones I don’t. Which brings us to gulls.
How don’t I love gulls? Let me count the ways:
1) Gulls are really, really hard to tell apart. For me, staring at a large flock of gray-and-white birds and trying to name the species is like studying an especially hard “one of these things is not like the others” puzzle. (FYI, I don’t love those either.) The differences—size, beak color, how much black a species has on its wingtips—are frustratingly minor!
Immature gulls are even worse. They’re almost always one shade or another of smudgy brown, and can ring endless variations on that monochrome theme for as many as four years before reaching adulthood. In her novel The Wallcreeper, the writer Nell Zink gets it right about gulls, describing “the many eerie transformations they undergo on their way from being indistinguishable to being basically unidentifiable.”
2) They eat almost anything…with a particular fondness for food we drop or throw away. You’ll often find them—including the rare species many birders chase—at landfills and dumps, in shopping-center parking lots, and on beachside boardwalks…in other words, wherever we’ve left our leavings.
We birders are already the target of a certain amount of amused mockery from those who don’t share our passion. Having to answer the question, “Where are you going with your binoculars?” with “To the dump” seems like cruel and unusual extra punishment. But that’s often where the gulls are.
3) They don’t know their place in the hierarchy of living things. If you’ve ever been stared at by a gull—for example, across a dropped French fry—you’ll see the intelligence, calculation, and self-confidence in that steely, yellow-eyed gaze. (Apologies for anthropomorphizing here, but you try entering a staring contest with a gull, then get back to me.)
Gulls are also smart enough not to rely on the food we drop or discard. The Internet is filled with videos of the birds snatching little kids’ ice cream cones, adults’ slices of pizza, and even items from stores’ snack aisles. And who’s going to challenge a bird with a beak like a dagger and the evident willingness to use it?
4) On top of all that, they—
Now, wait a second. I need to think about what I’m saying.
I started this essay with a thesis in mind—how much I dislike the whole gull family—and tons of examples to prove it. But as I go on, an unsettling truth has started elbowing its way into my mind.
The truth is: Nearly every example I’ve given you is actually a reason why gulls are actually cool. Really cool, possessing habits and behaviors that make them, in fact, some of the most fascinating—and successful—of all birds.
Let me explain:
1) Gulls are incredibly adaptable.
I complained about how often you see them in parking lots and landfills. But the reality is that they can make themselves at home almost anywhere: Beaches, rocky coastlines, barren islands, even lakes and rivers far from any ocean. Wherever they settle, they can then fly a hundred miles each day to find food. (Whenever a colony of flying ants would hatch out in my landlocked backyard in Brooklyn, a flock of Ring-billed Gulls would immediately appear in the sky above, hovering over my house and plucking the ants from midair.)
And the fact that gulls are generalists, feasting on everything from ants to fish to fries, means that—unlike too many species on our threatened earth—they have a good chance to survive beside us for generations to come.
2) They’re equally comfortable on land, sea, and air.
Ostriches can run faster than 40 miles per hour. Vultures can soar for hours without effort. Loons can swim with matchless ease. But you’ll never see an ostrich fly, a vulture swim, or a loon run. They just can’t do it.
Gulls are among the few birds that can do all three beautifully. They paddle in the choppiest waves, walk comfortably in the busiest parking lots, and fly long distances to find an attractive landfill, an unwary victim walking away from an ice-cream stand, or hatching ants. When it comes to taking advantage of their opportunities, gulls can’t be beat.
- They can use tools!
You’ve probably seen it—a gull rising from a rocky beach, concrete sidewalk, or another unyielding surface, carrying a clam or mussel in its beak. Higher and higher it goes, until it finally drops the mollusk, swooping down after it. If the hard shell has shattered, the gull eats the delicate flesh. If not? It tries again.
(Before you point this out: The solid earth itself is as much of a tool as the nutcrackers, hammers, or oyster-shuckers we “advanced” creatures use to break into hard shells.
So when it comes to gulls, what are we left with? Intelligent, adaptable, tool-using creatures that are so successful they’ve colonized every continent, including Antarctica. Even for a nay-sayer like me, that’s worth trumpeting.
All this said, I still don’t love gulls. I’ll always prefer the smaller jewels of the bird world. And when I see a huge gull flock, I’ll still leave it to others to sort through it for that one gray-and-white rarity.
But respect, even admiration? Count me in as a new member of Team Gull.
Copyright © 2025 by Joseph Wallace
