Capelin, Laughing Gulls, and Franklin's Gulls. Oh My!
June 23rd marked the first sighting of a Franklin’s Gull Leucophaeus pipixcan in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2025. It was photographed by Glenn Mitchell at the Drook on the road to Cape Race, with a flock of hundreds of other gulls, including one Laughing Gull Leucophaeus atricilla. There have been 5 distinct sightings of Laughing Gulls so far in 2025, throughout late May and mid-June, in addition to Glenn’s.
This observation coincides with capelin Mallotus villosus beginning their annual spawning, which involves both offshore deep-water and onshore beach spawning events. Such spawning events are incredible to watch and involve thousands of small silvery fish “rolling” onshore, where male capelin thrust themselves upon and alongside females as close to the beach as they can, often in just an inch or two of water as the waves crash onto the gravel. This allows the newly fertilized eggs to cling to the small gravel rocks, where the fry will hatch and float out to sea. Of course, large congregations of bait fish in shallow areas creates an incredible feeding opportunity for marine mammals and fishes, and especially for seabirds. Beach-spawning capelin attract pelagic seabirds like shearwaters and Northern Gannets Morus bassanus to forage near shore, and allows coastal birds like gulls and cormorants to join them in the frenzy. These events can draw tens of thousands of seabirds!
This observation also coincides with a dispersion of Laughing and Franklin’s Gulls that occurs each summer.
Laughing Gulls are a primarily coastal species, occurring from Maine to southern Texas and throughout the Caribbean during the breeding season, wintering across Mexico and south to Peru in the Pacific and to northern Brazil in the Atlantic. Though their breeding habitat historically occupied the saltmarshes of the coastal U.S. (Cape Cod south to the Gulf of Mexico), the species has adapted to nesting in sand dunes and on small islands north of Massachusetts to Maine and Machias Seal Island, New Brunswick, with some breeding records from Nova Scotia and the freshwater shores of the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes. The species is adapted to feeding in fields, landfills, and even parking lots of fast food restaurants in parts of its range, especially in Florida where it’s a resident year-round. Generally, however, Laughing Gulls remain a very coastal bird, usually seen on beaches and feeding nearshore at sea. During their summer breeding period, this species disperses widely both north and south along the coast, usually throughout June to September. As such, overshoots and can be seen in Atlantic Canada during this time, even ending up in Newfoundland and southern Labrador occasionally. There are summer records of dispersing Laughing Gulls as far east as the U.K., mainland Europe, and even Georgia on the Black Sea!
Franklin's Gulls, on the other hand, occupy freshwater marshes to breed, found only in the Canadian Great Plains of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and the northern states of Montana and the Dakotas. Franklin’s Gulls are unique in many ways, such as being one of only two North American gull species that migrates to wintering grounds below the equator. This species congregates along the pacific coast of South America from Ecuador to southern Chile, where it becomes entirely coastal. This species does not disperse in the same way that Laughing Gulls do, and only tend to wander about the prairies once they desert their breeding colonies in late July. Yet, for some reason, there are numerous records of the species along the east coast of the U.S. and Canada, as well as throughout western Europe. This is difficult to explain and I don’t plan to pontificate how or why this trend in movement occurs with small numbers of Franklin’s Gulls each year, but it is a well-documented and known phenomenon. These wandering Franklin’s Gulls tend to associate with flocks of Laughing Gulls, other small hooded gulls like Bonaparte’s Gulls Chroicocephalus philadelphia, and their prairie cousins, Ring-billed Gulls Larus delawarensis.
2024 was a fantastic year for both Franklin’s and Laughing Gulls in Newfoundland and Labrador. Last year alone there were 58 eBird observations of Laughing Gulls, in 12 locations, comprising at least 11 individuals, conservatively. This is not a record-breaking number of individuals, since this species is somewhat prone to being blown northbound along the Atlantic coast with tropical cyclones, but it was an unusual number of Laughing Gulls to occur in the province without the influence of a hurricane.
2024 also had 35 Franklin’s Gull observations, in 5 locations, comprising at least 4 individuals. This was a record high count of Franklin’s Gulls for any one year in Newfoundland and Labrador. The long-staying Forteau bird was Labrador’s fourth ever, and is likely the same one seen just across the strait in Eddie’s Cove East, Newfoundland nearly a month prior. This is corroborated by photographs taken from each location, showing a similar head and wing moult pattern. Franklin’s Gulls are the only species of gull that completes a moult twice in one year; once between December and April into “summer plumage”, and again between June and September into “winter plumage”, which the Forteau Franklin's Gull was undergoing.
Understanding the timeline on which these Leucophaeus gulls were appearing across Newfoundland and Labrador is interesting and helps paint the bigger picture, as well as allows one to parse out how and why the conservative minimum estimates of 11 Laughing Gulls and a record 4 Franklin’s Gulls occurred, often simultaneously, in the province within one summer. To visualize it, I’ve created this figure with the help of Tori Burt:
First, one may notice that all of the St. Vincent’s records fall below the timeline, and this is simply to better understand what had occurred at this one hotspot. St. Vincent’s is well-known by locals and tourists alike to be a fantastic viewing spot for whales and seabirds during the capelin spawning season, because it is an extensive gravel beach habitat for large quantities of spawning capelin, yet it is deep enough just a few meters from shore to accommodate large whales and masses of seabirds to feed within a stones-throwing distance from observers on the beach. That is, if the fog allows for you to see more than a foot in front of your face! Not a guarantee in the summer on NL’s southeastern coast. Due to its renowned status as a must-visit hotspot for birders and tourists, the Laughing and Franklin’s Gull saga was well-documented in St. Vincent's and photos revealed an interesting story:
Initially, a sub-adult Franklin's Gull was seen well and poorly photographed on June 23rd, and not seen again for a while. In the meantime: a Laughing Gull was photographed from July 8th to 11th; an adult Franklin’s was photographed on July 20th; then the Laughing Gull showed up again on July 27th (same day a Laughing Gull was sighted in Bellevue!). On August 3rd and 4th, the sub-adult Franklin’s appeared once more. This back-and-forth of at least 3 individuals of 2 species illustrates the complexity of movements and behaviour of these wayward birds. Note that John Brattey photographed a sub-adult Franklin’s Gull at 10:00 on August 4th at Peter’s River, then at 10:27, observed another sub-adult on Holyrood Pond in St. Vincent’s. Though the Peter’s River sighting is included separately from the St. Vincent’s records on the timeline, these are considered to be the same bird, seen twice within half-an-hour at two locations just 3 km from one another.
Another interesting finding is that in the fall, two different juvenile Laughing Gulls showed up on the southern Avalon Peninsula. A juvenile was seen in Renews on August 24th and continued through September 4th, where it was photographed at 6:38am. Then, at 8:30am on September 4th, a different juvenile Laughing Gull appeared in Portugal Cove South. This bird was then sighted in Trepassey September 5th, and seen in Portugal Cove South again September 6th.
Meanwhile, to add to the confusion, an adult winter plumage Laughing Gull was seen at Cape St. Mary’s on August 22nd and 23rd, then at Trepassey on August 24th, 29th, and 30th. Subsequently, an adult in winter plumage was seen at the Drook on the road to Cape Race September 10th and Portugal Cove South September 13th, thought to be the same bird seen in August at Cape St. Mary’s/Trepassey. Sightings of similar-looking individuals - aged and identified based on their plumage characteristics - across different locations near each other further illustrates the movements these birds took and highlights the value of birdwatching efforts, citizen science data, and the use of photographs not just to identify gulls to the species level, but also down to the individual level!
I hope you found this information as entertaining and informative as I did, and I hope 2025 turns into just as good of a year (or better) for summer gull-watching!
Robert (Bobby) Blackmore
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