BirdNote®
Have You Ever Seen a Pink Gull?
Written by Bob Sundstrom
That is BirdNote.
If we consider pink birds, flamingos and spoonbills may come to thoughts.
However gulls and terns also can have glowing pink breasts.
[Franklin’s Gull calls, https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/31869631 ]
We image these seaside birds decked out of their normal colours of grey, white, and black. But a number of gull and tern species greet spring with a rosy blush on their breasts. Franklin’s Gulls, flying north to nest within the prairie wetlands, glow reddish-pink under—flashy sufficient that within the nineteenth century, the chicken was generally known as “Franklin’s Rosy Gull.”
The Laughing Gull, widespread alongside the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, may present a suffusion of pink.
[Laughing Gull call: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/229275 Laugh: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/68765181 ]
The pinkest of all of this group are Roseate Terns, which have some pink all 12 months, however attain their showiest initially of the breeding season.
[Roseate Tern call, https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/66304761 ]
That is true of all pink-breasted gulls. The rosy glow, current in each women and men, might sign that the birds are physiologically able to pair up and start breeding and nesting.
That pink blush finally comes from pigments within the birds’ meals known as carotenoids (pron: kuh-ROT-un-oids). These gulls and terns are capable of convert these naturally occurring pigments to hues which will improve their success at attracting a mate — and assist foster the following era of the rosy-breasted.
For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann.
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Fowl sounds supplied by The Macaulay Library of Pure Sounds on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by Paul Marvin and Bob McGuire.
BirdNote’s theme music was composed and performed by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Managing Producer: Jason Saul
Affiliate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
© 2018 Tune In to Nature.org Could 2018 / June 2022 Narrator: Mary McCann
ID# plumage-04-2018-05-16 plumage-04
Do you know?
The Franklin’s Gull is a “half-time seagull.” They spend a lot of their lives away from the ocean, breeding in colonies on lakes all throughout inland North America. Study extra on this BirdNote Day by day episode.
