Birds of Central Oklahoma

All birds Gulls, Terns, and Skimmers

Herring Gull, adult
Adult Photo by Rhododendrites. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Herring Gull

Larus smithsonianus

Here October to February.

Recorded by Allen T. Chartier. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, via xeno-canto, trimmed and volume evened out.

Look for

  1. A big gull with pink legs and pale eyes. Its wingtips are black with white spots.
  2. A thick yellow bill with a red spot on it.
  3. In winter, a grown-up's white head gets lots of gray-brown streaks.

A little about it

Herring Gulls are winter birds here. Look for them from October to February. Young gulls tend to fly farther south for the winter than grown-ups do. Some bird guides call it the American Herring Gull.

This gull eats almost anything. Fish, crabs, bugs, eggs, and even other birds are all food to it. It eats trash and dead animals too, and it may steal food from other birds.

Herring Gulls nest in groups, often on islands. The nest is a shallow dip on the ground, next to a bush or a rock that blocks the wind. Some even nest on gravel roofs. Most nests have 3 eggs, and the chicks can fly about 45 to 50 days after they hatch.

In the 1800s, people took lots of their eggs and hunted them for their feathers. There got to be far fewer of them. Once they were protected, their numbers grew a lot.

Fun fact

A Herring Gull has a trick for cracking open a crab. It carries the crab high in the air, then drops it on the rocks so the shell breaks.

When it's here

Taller bars mean more sightings. Most often seen in January.

More winter birds

How big

SparrowRobinCrowGoose

22 to 26 inches, with wings 4 to 5 feet across. Bigger than a crow. It's one of the big gulls.

Where to look

Big lakes and rivers. They also look for food in plowed fields and at dumps.

  • On or by water
  • Fields and roadsides
  • Flying overhead

People have spotted it at Lake Hefner.

Could it be something else?

  • Ring-billed Gull

    A smaller gull with yellow legs. Its yellow bill has a neat black ring around it. In winter, some Herring Gulls get a dark ring on the bill too, so check the legs.

  • Young Herring Gull

    Young gulls start out dark brown all over, with a blackish bill. It takes until their 4th winter to look like grown-ups. Young Ring-billed Gulls are much paler and grayer.

More photos

Herring Gull, young bird
Young bird Photo by Rhododendrites. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Where these facts come from