Utah Lake in Provo, UT is a great place for birding.  The lake has a variety of birds and there are marshes where more birds will hopefully hang out in the summer.

There are two long roads that make nice walkways for looking at the ducks.

Some fishermen drilled through the ice to fish.  The Ring-Billed Gulls were watching the fishermen intently, hoping that they could snag a fish or at least have some scraps after the fishermen clean the fish.

It’s amazing how many gulls are in Utah.  The picture below is from Farmington Bay.  The ice was covered in birds.

Ring-Billed Gulls are the easiest Utah gull to identify.  There’s no wondering about whether the eyes are pink or the wings have too much grey.  These birds have a black ring on the beaks.  That’s all you need to know.

But if you’d like more specifics, they have yellow eyes, yellow feet, and spots and streaks on their heads.  Second winter California gulls also have a black ring on their beaks, but it’s barely a ring because there is very little yellow at the tip of their beaks.  Also, their eyes are black and their feet are greenish/yellow.  The Ring-Billed Gull has very distinctive yellow eyes that are lined in red.

In the picture below, you can see the black tips on the primary feathers.  That’s very common in gulls.  But on the left wing, can you make out a patch of white in the middle of the black?  The white patch is called a mirror.  People that are much more discerning than me can identify a gull based on the pattern of the mirror.

Since there are tons of gulls in Utah, I should start studying these things more closely.