Category Archives: cape cod gulls

Winter Scenes

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I drove to Provincetown today and these are some of the photos I took along the way. Cape Cod Bay has lots of ice. This shot is from First Encounter Beach in Eastham.Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown had a very brisk wind and these gulls were hunkered down in the sand to stay warm and out of the wind.
This view is overlooking Nauset Marsh from the Coast Guard station in Eastham.
Another view of Nauset Marsh showing the ice.
On the other end of Nauset Marsh, the view from Fort Hill in Eastham…
It was a cold and windy day but still beautiful here on Cape Cod. We saw very few other people out and about but lots of other cool things. I will post some of them as the week goes on.

Young gulls….

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are easy to recognize with their gray and rather mottled appearance and there are quite a few of them on our beaches and in parking lots right now. Some species of gull keep their immature plumage for up to 4 years though the average is probably more like 2-3 years.

This young bird is a first year herring gull. Herring gulls used to be the dominant gull on the Cape, with a few greater Black-backed gulls mixed in and laughing gulls in the summer. Black-backs are now the dominant gull, I believe. They are the largest gull and very aggressive so that is not surprising. There are still plenty of herring gulls around, though. They are the gulls most people around here refer to as sea gulls. There aren’t really any particular birds named sea gull, by the way. It’s just a general sort of name, like minnows for tiny fish…..

This is an adult herring gull starting to go into its fall plumage. See the red tip at the end of the beak? That is fading now but in the spring and summer that is a bright red. Baby gulls eat food regurgitated by their parents and they let their parents know they are hungry by pecking on the red spot.
Do you know why herring gulls are called herring gulls?