The young are precocial, born with dark mottled down and mobile upon hatching. They lay two or three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. Gulls nest in large, densely packed, noisy colonies. Large white-headed gulls are typically long-lived birds, with a maximum age of 49 years recorded for the herring gull. The large species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Gulls are typically coastal or inland species, rarely venturing far out to sea, except for the kittiwakes. Gulls have unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey. Live food often includes crustaceans, mollusks, fish and small birds. Most gulls are ground-nesting carnivores which take live food or scavenge opportunistically, particularly the Larus species. They typically have harsh wailing or squawking calls stout, longish bills and webbed feet. Gulls are typically medium to large in size, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. An older name for gulls is mews, which is cognate with German Möwe, Danish måge, Swedish mås, Dutch meeuw, Norwegian måke/måse and French mouette, and can still be found in certain regional dialects. Until the 21st century, most gulls were placed in the genus Larus, but that arrangement is now considered polyphyletic, leading to the resurrection of several genera. They are most closely related to the terns and skimmers and only distantly related to auks, and even more distantly to waders. Gulls, or colloquially seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. Juvenile of Armenian gull in flight, flying over Lake Sevan Temporal range: Early Oligocene – Present
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