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California gulls look much like typical 'seagulls', but they breed inland, often on austere salt lakes. One of the largest colonies is at Mono Lake, in the eastern Sierra Nevada of California, where I took many of these pictures. The lake has several isolated breeding islands protected from predators (these were threatened by water diversions to the city of Los Angeles until environmentalists won court-ordered protection of a stable lake level). It also offers two food sources: brine shrimp in the water, and brine (or alkali) flies along the shore. The two birds below are resting on the lake shortly after dawn (accounting for the pink tinge on the water on the right photo). Other gulls shown below are feeding on brine flies by sneaking up to a dense aggregation of flies on the shoreline and then charging in with lowered head and snapping bill -- pretty comical, but it works. Most of these birds look a little ratty as they are in post-breeding molt. Other photos show winter-plumage adult California gulls (mostly; a few other gull species are mixed in) on ocean beaches and the Salton Sea in southern California. More images are here. |
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