Laughing Gull

Sightings
Laughing Gull was a very common visitor to the bay in front of the Blue Waters Inn and we saw a large number of birds on our excursion to Little Tobago. Several birds were seen inside the forests on Little Tobago and were presumaly breeding or planning to breed. The bird in the photo is in full breeding plumage.

Species
Laughing Gull Leucophaeus atricilla breeds on the Atlantic coast of North America, the Caribbean, and northern South America. There are two subspecies of which L. a. atricilla breeds in the West Indies to north Venezuelan islands.

Status and Distribution
Laughing Gull is a species of least concern with an increasing population in its resident and breeding range of some seventeen million square kilometres. It is an abundant visitor to the coasts of west and south Trinidad in winter but is uncommon elsewhere. It is a common breeding visitor to Tobago with a large colony on Little Tobago.

References
BirdLife; Wikipedia; World Bird Names; Kenefick, M., Restall, R., and Hayes, F. (2015) Birds of Trinidad and Tobago, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 122.

Photograph
Photographed in a patch of sunlight at 1/1000th of a second, f5.6 at ISO 1000.