This is the common large sea gull of much of our interior and coasts and a familiar urban bird; a gray mantled, black wing tipped gull seen in garbage dumps and harbors in all U.S. coastal cities. Oceans, bays, estuaries, beaches, fields, inland lakes, reservoirs and large streams ... all provide habitat for this inspirer of “Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.”

His free wheeling grace in the sky and his raucous yet lonely kee-ow, ke-ow manage to bring beauty to even the most odoriferous city dump.

It breeds from the Arctic to the northern states and winters from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.