Rarely appears alone — almost always in compounds: 海鸥 (hǎi'ōu, "seagull"), 白鸥 (bái'ōu, "white gull"), 鸥群 (ōuqún, "flock of gulls"). The classical poet Du Fu used 鸥 as a symbol of carefree solitude.
鸟 (the bird radical) gives the literal meaning — 鸥 is a bird, specifically the gull. It groups with 鸡 (chicken), 鸭 (duck), 鹅 (goose), 鸽 (pigeon) in the avian family. Simplified 鸟 replaced traditional 鳥 in 1956 reform.
区 has the alternate reading ōu (still preserved in 区氏 and surname use), which gives 鸥 its sound directly. Same phonetic shift in 欧 (ōu, Europe), 殴 (ōu, beat) and 呕 (ǒu, vomit) — the qū/ōu family branches off the 区 stem.
