The laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) 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.

Taxonomy

The laughing gull was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Larus atricilla. Linnaeus based his account on the "laughing gull" from the Bahamas that had been described and illustrated in 1729–1732 by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. The laughing gull is now one of five New World gulls placed in the genus Leucophaeus that was introduced in 1855 by the German ornithologist Carl Friedrich Bruch. The genus name Leucophaeus is from Ancient Greek leukos meaning "white" and phaios meaning "dusky". The specific epithet atricilla combines Latin ater meaning "black" with Modern Latin cilla meaning "tail"; the tail is black in young birds. It is however possible that Linnaeus intended to write atricapilla meaning "black-capped".

Like most other members of the genus Leucophaeus, the laughing gull was long placed in the genus Larus. It was moved to the resurrected genus Leucophaeus based on a 2005 molecular phylogenetic study that found that inclusion in Larus made that genus paraphyletic.

Two subspecies are accepted. They are listed below with their breeding ranges. of . 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. Immature birds are always darker than most similar-sized gulls other than Franklin's. First-year birds are greyer below and have paler heads than first-year Franklin's, and have an all-black tail. Second-year birds can be distinguished by the wing pattern, with more extensive black on the primary coverts, and sometimes still some black on the tail. The laughing gull's English name is derived from its raucous kee-agh call, which sounds like a high-pitched laugh "ha... ha... ha...".

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Laughing gull in flight (20680).jpg|Adult summer plumage, in flight

Laughing Gull - mating plumage.jpg|Summer (breeding) plumage includes black head and dark red bill

Laughing gull in flight (00921).jpg|Adult in winter plumage in flight

Laughing Gulls on sand.jpg|Adult in winter plumage

Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) RWD4.jpg|Juvenile starting molt to first-winter

Laughing gull (02914).jpg|First winter laughing gull in Riverhead, New York

Laughing gull Porthmadog.jpg|Vagrant in adult winter plumage in the UK in late 2005

Seagulls Miami Beach R01.jpg|Flock with first, second, and adult winter birds, Miami

Trim.F419E503-74D1-4BE4-90FA-31A0C888E761.webm|Laughing gulls following a shrimp boat off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida

Larus atricilla MWNH 0343.JPG|Egg, Collection Museum Wiesbaden

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References

  • Laughing Gull - Larus atricilla - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
  • Laughing Gull Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
  • Field Guide on Flickr
  • Laughing Gull Bird Sound at Florida Museum of Natural History