Breeding
This species breeds singly or in small colonies, with pair formation occurring in March or April. They make a lined nest on the ground often on top of a rocky stack, fallen log or other obstructing object which can block the contents from the elements. Usually, several nest scrapes are made before the one deemed best by the parents is selected and is then lined with grass, seaweed or moss or objects such as rope or plastic. The female lays one to three eggs sometime between late April and late June. The eggs are greenish-brown with dark speckles and blotches. Both parents participate in the incubation stage, which lasts for approximately 28 days. The breeding pair are devoted parents who both take shifts brooding the young, defending the nest and gathering food. Young Great Black-backed Gulls leave the nest area at 50 days of age and may remain with their parents for an overall period of around six months, though most fledglings choose to congregate with other immature gulls in the search for food by fall. These gulls reach breeding maturity when they obtain adult plumage at four years, though may not successfully breed until they are six years old.
Read more about this topic: Great Black-backed Gull
Famous quotes containing the word breeding:
“Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.”
—A.J. (Arnold Joseph)
“Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, as it is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)