Why is seabird poop good for the environment?
The poop of seabirds is important for the environment, writes Jason Bittel for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Jason Bittel writes that seabird droppings – from Penguins and especially flying seabirds – help to fertilize plants, and whole colonies of seabirds depositing their poop can have a positive affect on coral reefs and climate.
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What is a group of gulls called?
A group of gulls is called a colony of gulls.
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There are 50 billion wild birds on Earth – but four species dominate – says a New Scientist article on 17 May 2021.
Earth has around 50 billion wild bird species according to a new global estimate, but most species are very rare and only a handful number in the billions.
Just four wild species have over a billion individuals, and they are the most common wild bird species in the world. This is in contrast to 1,180 species that have less than 5,000 individual birds each.
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What does the tongue of a Gull look like?
Birds do not have teeth, so their tongues and beaks are adapted to foraging (looking for food) and feeding.
The European Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) is a large coastal bird. People often call it a Seagull, but as pointed out by a reader, it is a Gull, not a Seagull. It feeds on fish and crustaceans, such as crabs and shrimp. It is also a scavenger, feeding on human scraps.
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The winter plumage (feathers) of the Black-Headed Gull is very different from its summer plumage.
The Black-Headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) is a coastal bird, a common seagull in Europe and Asia in the Northern Hemisphere.
For most of the year, it has a white and pale-grey body with a chocolate-brown head – not a black head. It has black tips on its wing feathers. It has a red beak and red legs. But in winter its plumage changes.
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TheEuropean Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) is a large sea bird. It is a seagull.
The European Herring Gull has a grey back and grey upper wings, with a white head and white underparts. Its wingtips are black. Its beak is yellow with a red spot and there is a ring of bare yellow skin (eye-ring) around its pale eyes. Its legs are yellow-orange.
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The Pallas’s Gull (Ichthyaetus ichthyaetus) is a sea bird in the seagull family. It is also known as the Great Black-Headed Gull.
The Pallas’s Gull is white with a black head. It has grey wings and a grey back, with white ‘mirrors’ at the wing tips. Its legs are yellow, with webbed feet. Its beak is orange-yellow with a red tip. Its eyes are small and dark.
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The Caspian Gull (Larus cachinnans) is a medium-sized bird, a seagull related to the European Herring Gull. Cachinnans means laughing.
The Caspian Gull has a mainly creamy-coloured body with a brown-grey flecked back and wings. It has a sloping forehead and a long yellow-brown beak tipped with brown-black. Its eyes are small and dark. It has yellowish legs with webbed feet.
The Western European Herring Gull (Larus argentatus argenteus) is a large sea bird. It is a seagull.
The Western European Herring Gull has a grey back and grey upper wings, with a white head and white underparts. Its wingtips are black. Its beak is yellow with a red spot and there is a ring of bare yellow skin (eye-ring) around its pale eyes. Its legs are yellow.
The Black-Headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) is a coastal bird in the Laridae family of seagulls.
The Black-Headed Gull has a white and pale-grey body with a chocolate-brown head – not a black head. It has black tips on its wing feathers. It has a red beak and red legs. In winter, the chocolate-brown colour on its head disappears and there are only two dark spots.
The African Grey-Headed Gull (Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus poiocephalus) is a coastal bird, a seagull.
The African Grey-Headed Gull has a grey back, grey wings, a white chest, a pale grey head, and black-tipped tail feathers. It has a red beak and red legs.
The Silver Gull (Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae novaehollandiae) is also called the Australian Seagull because it is found in southern Australia. It is extremely common along the coastline.
The Silver Gull is white with light grey wings that are spotted with black tips. It has red legs and red beaks, which gets brighter with age.
The Pacific Gull (Larus pacificus) is a very large seagull, a sea bird, from Australia, larger than the Silver Gull. It is the largest gull in Australia.
The Pacific Gull is mostly white, with black wings, tail, and back. It has a very thick, powerful, yellow beak with a red tip. Its legs are yellow to orange-yellow.
Photographer: Martina Nicolls