Vorstman's guideThe birds of Canada, the United States and Greenland

All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Skimmers, noddies, terns and gulls

Skimmers, noddies, terns and gulls | Laridae

Meeuwen, sterns en schaarbekken | Gaviotas, charranes y rayadores

Under current classification the family includes not just gulls and terns but also the skimmers, and the bill shows it at a glance: gulls carry a stout bill hooked at the tip, suited to a generalist diet from carrion to garbage, terns a slender, pointed bill for plunging into the water from flight to seize fish, and the skimmer a unique bill, laterally compressed at the base, whose lower mandible is distinctly longer than the upper — it flies low over the water trailing that lower blade through the surface like a net. Larger gulls take several years to acquire their final, plain grey-and-white adult plumage, wearing a series of mottled brown immature plumages in the meantime, a maturation that in most other bird families is complete within a year. Gulls also routinely steal food from other birds by chasing them in flight and forcing them to drop their catch, a technique largely absent in terns and skimmers. When a colony is disturbed, dozens or hundreds of adults take to the air at once, calling loudly and diving at the intruder, a joint defence that rarely lets a trespasser leave unscathed.

Compare terns: bill, legs, head and tail side by side

Compare gulls: legs, head, bill and wing tip side by side

Native species 39 species

Species that occur here by nature: breeding birds, winter visitors and passage migrants. They are arranged by genus, in the sequence of the list.

Gulls | Larinae

20 species

Heavily built birds with broad, rounded wingtips and a stout bill that hooks slightly downwards at the front: not a probe for pushing into mud but a pair of pincers that can deal with almost anything — a crab, a fish, refuse, an egg or a chick. Fairly long legs let them walk easily and they sit high on the water, so you meet them on a ploughed field as readily as at sea. Where terns drop from a height, a gull picks from the surface while swimming, or chases another bird until it gives up its catch. Many wear a dark hood in summer that shrinks to a smudge behind the eye in winter, and the largest need two to four years of brown mottled dress before the clean grey and white is complete.

Larus 12 species

Terns | Sterninae

19 species

Slender, lightly built birds with long narrow wings and, in most, a forked tail, giving a buoyant, bounding flight quite unlike the steady sailing of the gulls. The bill is thin, straight and drawn out to a needle point; the legs are short, so they stand about on a beach but hardly walk on it. The hunting method is the mark of the group: they hang hovering over the water with the bill pointed down, then close the wings and plunge. The marsh-living species do not dive at all, but pick insects from the surface in dipping flight. Nearly all wear a black cap in the breeding season that fades to a white forehead in winter, and they nest in colonies on sand, shingle or floating vegetation.

Vagrants 9 species

Birds blown in from other continents, or from far outside their usual range.