Distribution

Breeding Range

Year-round resident on Great Lakes and east coast of North America from Newfoundland to North Carolina. Current breeding range (Fig. 1) extends from southern coast of Alaska inland across Canada to Hudson Bay south to North Carolina coast (Harrison 1983). Breeds in Iceland, Europe, and Russia (Grant 1986, Cramp and Simmons 1983).

Winter Range

Winter distribution and abundance show strong association with open fresh or salt water; fairly continuous distribution along all Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts; also extends north into s. Illinois, W. Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama along Mississippi, Ohio, and Cumberland Rivers. Gulf Coast distribution extends up Mississippi Valley, without fusing with that of northerly group. Disjunct populations present in Great Plains associated with Pecos, Red, Cimarron, Arkansas, Platte, and Missouri Rivers. Other inland populations associated with small lakes kept open by hot-water discharge from hydroelectric plants (Rocky Mountain foothills), also with Great Salt Lake and Lake Mead, NV. Overall northern limit corresponds to -12°C thermocline (Root 1988). Approximate southern limit of winter range is s. Central America (Grant 1986); recently recorded in Venezuela (Harrison 1983).

Circumpolar breeding distribution includes Iceland, coastlines of Europe, n. Asia, and n. Africa, and inland lakes of Asia (Cramp and Simmons 1983). Approximate southern limits of winter range extend to n. Africa, along southern coast of Asia (Grant 1986).

Once bred only as far south as central Maine (Bent 1921); expanded south along Atlantic Coast from 1950 to 1980 (Drury 1973). Atlantic Coast populations decimated in late 1800s; entire Maine coast population down to few thousand pairs (Palmer 1949). Populations at Isles of Shoals (Maine–New Hampshire border) comprised only wintering birds in late 1800s to peak of 7,000 breeding pairs in 1945 (Drury 1973). General southward expansion at expense of Laughing Gull (Larus atricilla) (Burger 1979) and possibly in response to southern range expansion of Great Black-backed Gull (McGill-Harelstad 1985, TPG, RJP).

In Newfoundland, recovered from near extirpation to reestablish populations in Witless Bay in late 1940s (L. Tuck pers. comm.).

North American sites of prehistoric findings include Kodiak, Little Kisku, Attu I., Dutch Harbor, and Cape Prince of Wales, AK; Whynacht and Bear River, Nova Scotia ; and Castle Windy, FL. Findings from Green Mound middens in Florida dated to A.D. 550 and A.D. 1200 (Brodkorb 1967). Findings from Holocene Epoch on island of Huar in Yugoslavia, where birds represented 0.26% of fauna uncovered (Malez-Bacic 1983).

Gulls not abundant in fossil record. One early Pliocene (4.5–5.0 million years before present [mybp]) and 2 Pleistocene (0.6–1.8 mybp) North American extinct species named (Brodkorb 1967, Olson 1985). Additional late Neogene records of Larus species from Arizona, California, and N. Carolina (Olson 1985, Bickart 1990, Chandler 1990). Larus argentatus not closely related to any of these species.