Laughing Gull: The Sound of a Florida Boat Day

How to identify a laughing gull

Look for a medium-sized, slim-winged gull about 16 to 17 inches long, built for effortless soaring more than diving. From spring through summer, breeding adults wear the field mark that gives them away at a hundred yards: a full black hood that runs from the crown down past the eye, broken only by thin white crescents above and below the eye. The bill and legs turn a deep, almost brick red, and the back and wings show a slate-gray mantle with black-tipped primaries. Come fall, that bold hood fades to a smudged gray patch behind the eye and across the nape, the bill dulls toward black, and the whole bird looks like it's had a long week — which, chasing shrimp boats and dolphin pods all summer, it probably has. Juveniles are browner still, with a scaly back and a dark band near the tail tip. On the water they sit lighter and paddle more nimbly than the bulkier ring-billed gulls that show up in winter, and in flight their wingbeats are quicker and more buoyant. Watch closely at a dock cleaning station and you'll notice laughing gulls are quicker on their feet than the bigger gulls loafing nearby, hopping in for scraps the instant something hits the water and just as fast getting elbowed out by a bolder bird. If you're watching from the rail on a dolphin tour, the laughing gull is almost always the one doing the most work for the least obvious reward — wheeling, diving, and hollering the whole time.

That ha-ha-ha-haah: the sound behind the name

The name isn't a stretch. Say it out loud: ha-ha-ha-ha-haah, a rising, cackling series that carries flat across open water and bounces off dock pilings from Goodland to downtown Naples. Scientists gave the bird the Latin name Leucophaeus atricilla — atricilla roughly translates to "black tail," though most people never notice the tail once they've heard the call. It's one of those sounds that becomes background noise almost instantly if you grow up around the water, the way cicadas fade into summer evenings, but it's also one of the clearest audio signatures of a working Florida dock. Hear it at sunrise at the marina and you know the shrimp boats are back in, gulls circling the wash as crews sort the night's catch. Hear a chorus of it kick off suddenly over open water mid-morning, and there's a decent chance something more interesting than leftover bait is happening below — which brings us to the real reason our captains keep one ear on the gulls.

Gulls, dolphins & shrimp boats

Laughing gulls are opportunists, and on the water that makes them useful to watch. They shadow local shrimp trawlers for scraps and bycatch tossed overboard, and they do the same thing over feeding bottlenose dolphins, wheeling and diving to snatch baitfish that get knocked loose or pushed to the surface during a feeding push. A sudden knot of gulls dropping and screaming over one patch of water, especially near a pass or sandbar edge, is one of the oldest tricks in a captain's book for finding dolphins working a bait ball. It doesn't work every time — sometimes it's just gulls squabbling over a dead mullet — but paired with slick water, jumping baitfish, or a fin breaking the surface, birds overhead are a genuine, honest clue, not a guarantee. Our captains have spent enough hours reading these islands to know the difference between random gull noise and the real thing, and it's part of what makes a dolphin tour out of Marco Island or Goodland more than just idling around hoping. The gulls don't know they're doing us a favor. They're just following an easy meal — but by the end of a trip, you'll be watching the sky the same way we do.

Why we never feed the gulls

It's tempting to toss a chip or a piece of bread off the rail — laughing gulls will hover at arm's length for it, and they're bold enough to snatch food right out of an open hand if you let them. Please don't. Gulls that get fed by boats and beachgoers get bolder, then aggressive, then dependent on food that isn't good for them, and a beach full of gulls swarming every cooler is a worse experience for everyone, birds included. It also pulls them away from natural foraging and can crowd out shier species trying to feed nearby. Our wildlife viewing etiquette is simple everywhere in the Ten Thousand Islands: watch, admire, photograph, and let the animal keep doing what it was doing before you showed up. The same restraint applies to shells on the sand — Collier and Lee County require empty shells only, no live takes, so if a gull is standing guard over a shell that still has something living inside it, that one stays on the beach. A little discipline is what keeps this whole ecosystem interesting to look at, tour after tour, season after season.

Where & when to see them

Laughing gulls are year-round residents here, which makes them the default gull of the Gulf coast — if you spot a gull on a dock piling, boat ramp, or sandbar edge anywhere between Naples and Goodland in any month, odds are good it's this one. Look for them loafing on the sand at Tigertail Beach and Sand Dollar Island, lined up on channel markers through Gordon Pass, and crowded around the cleaning tables at working docks in Goodland. In late spring and summer, breeding colonies form on undisturbed spoil islands and open sandbars around the Ten Thousand Islands — give any nesting group a wide, quiet berth from the water rather than approaching on foot, since a spooked colony can abandon nests fast. Inland a bit, they're less common over the mangrove creeks of Rookery Bay, which tend to belong more to herons, egrets and ospreys, but the open sand and open water they favor means Marco Island, Goodland and the barrier islands in between stay their real stronghold. Outside of nesting season they're everywhere on the Ten Thousand Islands wildlife circuit, trailing boats, working the tideline, and generally narrating the whole day with that unmistakable laugh. Keep your eyes on the sky as much as the water on any charter out here, and you'll start reading the same signs our captains do.