Without wading into the rabbit hole that is gull appreciation, there is one gull that one often finds where one is not looking for them. As David Winkler writes in North American Birds, "Many summer visitors to the interior of western North America are puzzled when, hiking along the shore of a salt lake, a prairie slough, or an alpine tarn, they hear above them the sound of the sea." These are the California Gulls, spending their winter along the coast like "normal" gulls, but then taking off and heading inland in the breeding season for inland lakes -- some as close as Mono Lake in California, but some much farther east into Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Not all of them apparently go on this inland journey -- many, particularly the juveniles will stay on their winter range. Nonetheless, the migration started as early as February and continues now. (photo by USFWS)