This is bird out.

Gulls are often called sea gulls are often called sea gulls, but many of them are not. Or at least they spend a lot of time far away

from the sea. The Franklin's gull is such a bird. It breeds in freshwater wetlands

over 5,000 miles from its winter home at the ocean.

These striking black-headed, pink-breasted small gulls breed in colonies on lakes all across inland

North America. When breeding, these birds feed in flocks on nearby prairies, taking earthworms, grubs, and grasshoppers.

But after the breeding season, these same flocks ascend high in the sky for their long

flight across the equator to the coasts of Peru and Chile. Now deserving the name

Seagull, they roost on the beach and dive for anchovies in the cold humbled

current. You would never know the Franklin's galls behind a fishing boat off

Peru were the same birds that just a few months earlier were following a tractor in Manitoba, but they are.

Again and again, we see that the habitats of the world are connected by the birds that go between them. For Bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.

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