LAUGHING GULLS' NESTING COLONIES

      Laughing gulls' black heads and incessant, laughing cries are abundant summer icons along Atlantic Ocean shorelines.  And, happily, those in-your-face gulls are everywhere along the Atlantic Coast- in salt marshes where they nest, on salt backwaters and channels off the ocean, sandy beaches, mud flats and boardwalks, and in towns on barrier islands along the ocean's shores.  But they seldom venture inland.  And they drift south in fall.  

     Thousands upon thousands of striking, loudly-calling laughing gulls arrive at their protective, tall-grass salt marshes, sprawled between barrier islands and the mainland along the Atlantic Coast by mid-April, and form breeding colonies of hundreds of pairs in each colony.  Amorous gulls pair off and court loudly with seemingly unending, laughing cries.  Each pair then makes a grassy nursery on slightly higher ground under tall grasses, where each female lays three olive or buff, dark-spotted eggs.  The eggs and the fluffy, precocious chicks that hatch from them are camouflaged on the ground. 

     The largest laughing gull nesting colonies in the world are located in New Jersey's vast salt marshes, from Cape May north to Point Pleasant Beach.  Thousands of those gulls annually hatch offspring there.  And those gulls swamp Jersey's Atlantic Shoreline every summer as they feed on insects, crabs, snails, small fish and other creatures.  And laughing gulls, like all gulls, are devout scavengers; consuming dead fish and crabs, edible garbage, and popcorn, bread and other goodies people on beaches and boardwalks throw to them.  Laughing gulls even pest brown pelicans, larger gulls, ospreys and terns to steal their hard-won prey from them.   

     Adult laughing gulls are mostly safe from predators.  But their eggs and chicks are vulnerable to crows, larger gulls, harrier hawks, mink and other creatures.  

     Beautiful and boisterous, laughing gulls are the noisy, entertaining summer icons of the Atlantic Coast.  It's exciting they are around to liven that shoreline.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LATE-SUMMER, ROADSIDE EDGES

      Many sunny, un-mowed edges of country roadsides grow tall with plants by August in southeastern Pennsylvania.  These long, lean, human-made habitats are interesting oases of tall, dense vegetation growth and small creatures.  Lovely bouquets of flowers perch obviously on tall plants adapted to disturbed soil, including white flowers on Queen-Anne's-lace, blue blooms of chicory, yellow ones on evening primrose, Canada goldenrod and velvetleaf, and pink blossoms on red clover and brown knapweed.  There are pink or white flowers on bindweed vines that crawl up the many tall foxtail and redtop grass growing thickly along these same roadsides, and corn stalks on the sunny edges of cornfields.  Goldenrods' innumerable, tiny golden blooms are particularly attractive to bees and other kinds of nectar-seeking, pollinating insects.  And by the second week in September, patches of that wild, ten-foot-tall sunflower, with large, yellow flowers, called J...
Read more

LATE NESTERS

     Three kinds of abundant birds in southeastern Pennsylvania, including mourning doves, American goldfinches and cedar waxwings, nest late in summer for a variety of reasons.  Most "song" birds in this area are done raising young by the middle of July, but these three adaptable species could be rearing offspring into early September as a result of being dependent on certain foods or nesting materials that are most abundant in late summer.       Each pair of handsome mourning doves raises two young per brood, but they "put-out" two young a month, on average, from March into September because they rear two broods at a time through the warmer months. Each pair of doves probably can only feed two young at a time because they regurgitate pre-digested seeds into the beaks of their offspring.  But they compensate for that by hatching chicks in spring and summer.       Each pair of doves starts a brood of young early in March....
Read more

TURKEY VULTURES

     During many summer mid-mornings, when I lived along Rohrerstown Road in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I saw several turkey vultures soar up effortlessly and gracefully on warm, summer breezes over a wooded hill located a quarter mile in front of our house.  Within a few minutes, those vultures rose gracefully and sailed across the sky out of sight.  Each vulture was on its way to search for carrion in fields throughout much of southeastern Pennsylvania.  And each one expends little energy while soaring for hours.         Today, throughout each year, I see turkey vultures soaring on high, literally everywhere; around home in New Holland, Pennsylvania, over fields in southeastern Pennsylvania, and over the lower Susquehanna River.  I even see them sailing over the expressways we take south on trips.      Turkey vultures are large, dark-brown birds.  Young and mature birds have naked skin on their heads ...
Read more