Gulls: What's so Special about a "Seagull"?

tgreybirds.com (California gulls)

   I am able to drink up sea water and expel the salt with a pair of salt glands located in my head above my eyes. Super salty water is absorbed from my bloodstream and excreted through the glands down my beak, trickling out my nostrils. Did you know I have this magic? Did you know we birds have nostrils?

 

www.kiwifoto.com

  I saw many gulls in their great colonies on the mudflats at Alviso Marina County Park. Ho-hum, seagulls; of course I kept my eyes peeled for something less ordinary. The ones pictured here, in an apparent embrace, are Western gulls, residents of the Pacific Coast. Many types of seagull (and people probably won't stop calling them that despite birders' urgency for accuracy) are birds I see daily without looking for them as they fly high overhead or float around on a city pond or take leftovers off the schoolyard. Birders are ever in pursuit of that rare sighting, but, for me, there is no ordinary bird. Gulls too possess their secrets.

http://www.pbase.com/tgrey/yard  Tom Grey has a helpful, friendly website with amazing photographs he took of many types of birds. Check this out!