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Laridae (1 Viewer)

Anyone know if there is any truth in Common Gull being so named in English because of habitat preference rather than abundance? After all, in most of southern Britain it is not the common gull at all, and perhaps has had the tendency in the past to turn up on commons in the winter.:smoke:
 
'Common' Gull

Anyone know if there is any truth in Common Gull being so named in English because of habitat preference rather than abundance? After all, in most of southern Britain it is not the common gull at all, and perhaps has had the tendency in the past to turn up on commons in the winter.:smoke:
Greenoak 1997 (British Birds: their Folklore, Names and Literature)...
Willughby (1678) called it the Common Sea-mall and Pennant (1776) the Common Gull. In this case, it would seem that the word 'common' refers not to the frequency of occurrence but is used in the Middle English sense of having no distinguishing features.
???
 
Anyone know if there is any truth in Common Gull being so named in English because of habitat preference rather than abundance? After all, in most of southern Britain it is not the common gull at all, and perhaps has had the tendency in the past to turn up on commons in the winter.:smoke:

Southern Britain is not the only part of Britain ;)

Up here in the North, it at least used to be by far the most abundant gull in winter, with roost counts of 30,000-40,000 compared to just a few thousand for the next most abundant (Black-headed). Sadly it has declined a lot in recent years though.

Pennant (1768) clearly states Common Gull to be "the most numerous of the genus" ... "in winter they are found in vast flocks on all our shores", and doesn't suggest any other reason for his choice of name.
 
Latham 1785 also abounds:
This seems to be the most common of all the Gulls, being found in vast numbers on our shores and rivers which are contiguous to the sea. Seen also very far north, as far as Iceland, and the Russian lakes : is likewise met with in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, in various shores of the Mediterranean; and as far south as Greece: is found also in America, on the coast of Newfoundland. [...] It is a tame species, and may be seen by hundreds on the shores of the Thames and other rivers, in the winter and spring, at low tides, picking up the various worms and small fish left by the tides; and will often follow the plough in the fields contiguous, for the sake of worms and insects which are turned up [...].
Yet I find it a bit curious how the earlier works -- Willughby 1678 (or before it Willughby 1676) and later also Ray 1713 --, just before introducing this "Common Sea-Mall" (without a word about its abundance), insisted on how frequent/common the previous species (their Herring Gull) was...

Note that Ray, in 1713, called the Common Gull "Mew", too. o:)
(Of course, "mew", in this sense, is just the Germanic equivalent of the Celtic-rooted "gull". The same word as Dutch "meeuw", German "Möwe", French "mouette", etc.)
 
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I guess what's needed is a history of the usage/meaning of the word 'common' - there's common land (land that was used by everyone) and the book of common prayer (again, something which was for everyone).
 
As an aside, how frequent are the two taxa in the eastern US / southeastern Canada? Which is the commoner of the two there, and how does canus compare in frequency with other transatlantic gulls like Little, Black-headed and Lesser Black-back?
Alderfer 2014 (Complete Birds of North America)...
VAGRANT: Mew casual on Bering Sea islands, accidental on Atlantic coast. "Common" rare in Atlantic Canada (mainly late Oct.–Apr.), most frequent to NF; casual south to mid-Atlantic coast. "Kamchatka" rare spring and casual fall migrant in western Aleutians; casual on Bering Sea islands.
Moskoff & Bevier 2002 (BNA Online)...
... Also casual in winter along Atlantic Seaboard (all records coastal or coastal plain; those identified certainly have all been of canus group) from se. Canada to ne. U.S. (e.g., Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, s. New York (Long Island), and Delaware (Veit and Petersen 1993, Guthrie et al. 1999, Hess et al. 2000, G. Armistead pers. comm.).
So canus is commoner in the east than brachyrhynchus. Perhaps canus has become more frequent since colonisation of Iceland (1955)?

Little and Black-headed Gulls are now essentially resident in N America. Lesser Black-back: "Rare to locally fairly common in east (mainly Sept.–Apr.); max. counts are from mid-Atlantic region south to FL" (Alderfer 2014).
 
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I think (?) Common remains a real rarity anywhere outside NF.
I know I've seen quite a few pics of birds I'd call Short-billed from the Eastern US over the years, eg.: [this] (NY), or [this] (ME). This taxon is supposed to be more common than Common in Ontario (see Pittaway & Iron 2000); an example: [here].
What looks (strikingly) like a Kam in CT: [here]. (Almost everything seems possible, thus...)

FWIW, I've seen the other three spp in NE North America, without having targeted them, and despite having spent barely more than two weeks of my life in this area.
 
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Lesser Black-backed are uncommon I would say on Long Island...they can be seen without a ton of difficulty but are not as easy as Herring, Great Black-backed, Ring-billed, or Laughing.

Black-headed are annual in winter, with less than a handful at scattered locations. Generally worth reporting if found

Little is probably rare than that, although more regular up near Niagara. I don't recall any sightings this year. I would say the same about Common.

Of course...the farther north you go I think the more common some of these are.
 
Kelp Gull

Fernanda de Almeida Santos, João Stenghel Morgante, Esteban Frere, Ana Millones, Martin Sander, Juliana de Abreu Vianna, Gisele Pires de Mendonça Dantas. Evolutionary history of the Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus) in the southern hemisphere supported by multilocus evidence. Journal of Ornithology, First online: 13 June 2016.

[abstract]
 
Sarah A. Sonsthagen, Robert E. Wilson, R. Terry Chesser, Jean-Marc Pons, Pierre-Andre Crochet, Amy Driskell, Carla Dove. Recurrent hybridization and recent origin obscure phylogenetic relationships within the ‘white-headed’ gull (Larus sp.) complex. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 28 June 2016.

[abstract]
 
TiF Update August 21, 2016

Gulls: The Gray-hooded Gull / Gray-headed Gull, Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus, has been split into the Gray-hooded Gull, Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus, of South America and the Gray-headed Gull, Chroicocephalus poiocephalus, of Africa. Given et al. (2005) found that C. poiocephalus was more closely related to Hartlaub's Gull, Chroicocephalus hartlaubii than to C. cirrocephalus. They noted this relationship could be an artifact of introgression, but they did not have any evidence to that effect.
 
Gulls: The Gray-hooded Gull / Gray-headed Gull, Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus, has been split into the Gray-hooded Gull, Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus, of South America and the Gray-headed Gull, Chroicocephalus poiocephalus, of Africa. Given et al. (2005) found that C. poiocephalus was more closely related to Hartlaub's Gull, Chroicocephalus hartlaubii than to C. cirrocephalus. They noted this relationship could be an artifact of introgression, but they did not have any evidence to that effect.
It's very little data to base a conclusion, I think.
The two hartlaubii barcodes that are in BOLD (scroll down to the BIN tree, then click on the "PDF tree (All members and a member of the nearest BIN)" link to see the geographical origin of the samples) are 100% identical to two poiocephalus barcodes, as well as two cirrocephalus barcodes. Then you have some other cirrocephalus that are a bit different, and some other poiocephalus that are a bit different too.
Given et al. found one poiocephalus more closely related to two Hartlaub's Gull than to one cirrocephalus. How do we know they wouldn't have found the opposite, had they chosen other individuals?
 
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