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ID tip
This species is 36–41 cm (14–16 in) long with a 98–110 cm (39–43 in) wingspan and a weight range of 203–371 grams (7.2–13.1 oz). The summer adult's body is white apart from the dark grey back and wings and black head. Its wings are much darker grey than all other gulls of similar size except the smaller Franklin's gull, and they have black tips without the white crescent shown by Franklin's. The beak is long and red. The black hood is mostly lost in winter. Laughing gulls take three years to reach adult plumage.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
When to see the Laughing Gull
One bar for each month, and every month is filled: this bird is recorded here in all twelve. The wide bar is April, the month with the most records.
Where to see the Laughing Gull
The map shades 64 countries with regular records, and 20 more in a lighter tone where the bird turns up only as a stray. Everything unshaded has no records. Countries are listed below the map.
Recorded as a rare visitor in Sweden, France, Norway, South Africa, Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Argentina, Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Morocco, Belgium, Georgia, Bolivia, Fiji, Nigeria, India, Greece.
About the Laughing Gull
The laughing gull is a medium-sized gull of North and South America. Named from its laugh-like call, it is an opportunistic omnivore and scavenger. It breeds in large colonies mostly along the Atlantic coast of North America, the Caribbean, and northern South America. Two subspecies are accepted, L. a. atricilla, which occurs from the West Indies to the Venezuelan islands, and L. a. megalopterus, which occurs from southeast Canada down to Central America. The laughing gull was long placed in the genus Larus until its present placement in Leucophaeus.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Easily confused with
Side by side: Franklin's Gull vs Laughing Gull · Grey Gull vs Laughing Gull
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