Science of Summer: Ottawa’s favourite gulls are actually newcomers
Ottawa Citizen

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, July 31, 2017

Summer’s at its height, and Postmedia’s Tom Spears looks at the science of summer — the way we connect with the all-too-short season we revere.

Ring-billed gulls — we mostly just call them seagulls — are everywhere in Ottawa, but most people don’t realize they are newcomers.

There had been herring gulls here before the 1940s, but the ring-bills first arrived around 1945. A man named Douglas Savile of the Department of Agriculture had been noticing these gulls occasionally but it wasn’t until 1946 that he felt there were enough to deserve mentioning.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/science-of-summer-ottawas-favourite-gulls-are-actually-newcomers

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