What bird says mine, mine?

No real bird says mine, mine. The line belongs to the cartoon seagulls of Pixar's 2003 film Finding Nemo, who still shout it from a buoy at Disneyland. The real gulls behind the joke are plenty loud, though. In a parking lot or outside a fast-food restaurant, especially inland, it is most often a Ring-billed Gull, with a raucous, mewing cry. On the coast, the big Herring Gull gives a rollicking kuk-kuk-kuk, yucca-yucca-yucca, and around beaches and salt marshes the Laughing Gull laughs ha-ha-ha-haah.

Where mine, mine comes from

This is a movie line, not a birder's mnemonic. It comes from the seagulls of Finding Nemo, and it has outlasted the film's run in theaters. Disneyland's Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, which opened in Tomorrowland in 2007 and is based on the film's characters and settings, has three seagulls on a buoy near the entrance that cry Mine! Mine! Mine! every few moments.

No gull calls in words, so do not expect a real one to say it. What the joke gets right is the attitude around food. Audubon notes that Herring Gulls may steal food from other birds, that Laughing Gulls snatch fish straight out of a Brown Pelican's pouch, and that Ring-billed Gull flocks hang around parking lots, fast-food restaurants and landfills.

Listen: the Ring-billed Gull, the parking lot regular

Audubon calls the Ring-billed Gull often the most common and widespread gull in North America, especially inland, with numbers probably still rising. Its voice is a loud, raucous, mewing cry, much like a Herring Gull's but higher. If you want a real bird whose repeated cries come closest to the cartoon's, this is the one to listen to, and it is the gull most likely to be eyeing your lunch far from the ocean: flocks rest in parking lots, pick up scraps around fast-food restaurants and swarm over landfills.

Look for it on lakes, bays, coasts, piers and plowed fields as well as in town. Ring-billed Gulls migrate in flocks that often follow coastlines or big rivers, and they tend to fly higher when crossing land.

The other gulls behind the joke

The Herring Gull is the big, familiar gull of the coast, and Audubon writes its call as a loud, rollicking kuk-kuk-kuk, yucca-yucca-yucca, mixed with other raucous cries. It lives on ocean coasts, bays, beaches, lakes, piers, farmland and dumps, most of all along the coast, the large lakes and the major rivers, and it stays all year as far north as New England, the Great Lakes and southern Alaska. Besides stealing from other birds, it cracks crabs and shellfish by carrying them high and dropping them on rocks. In recent decades it has been spreading south along the Atlantic Coast.

The Laughing Gull sounds like it finds the whole beach funny. Its call is a loud, high-pitched ha-ha-ha-ha-haah-haah-haah, and Audubon counts its strident laughing among the most characteristic sounds of tidewater country. It is a coastal bird of salt marshes, bays, piers and beaches that rarely strays far inland, and it pulls out of northern areas in winter. Its signature move would fit right into a Pixar film: a Laughing Gull may land on a Brown Pelican's head and grab fish from the pelican's bill pouch.

How to tell which gull you heard

• Where you are. A parking lot, a fast-food restaurant or a lake far from the sea: Ring-billed Gull. A harbor, a pier, the Great Lakes or a big river: Herring Gull, often with Ring-billed Gulls mixed in. A salt marsh or beach on the coast, outside winter in the North: Laughing Gull.
• The pitch. A Ring-billed Gull sounds like a higher version of a Herring Gull, so the deeper, louder voice in a mixed flock is usually the Herring Gull.
• The rhythm. A laugh that starts fast and stretches into long notes is a Laughing Gull. A rollicking yucca-yucca-yucca series is a Herring Gull.
• The words. If you clearly heard Mine!, look for a buoy, a screen or a theme park.

If a gull keeps calling, Warble can listen and tell you which one it is. It will not translate, but it knows a Laughing Gull from a Herring Gull.

Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Facts about birds on this page come from the sources above.