SEAGULLS, BAYGULLS AND LAKEGULLS

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

There are little gulls down here Prince Edward County right now. Not "little" gulls, but rather, "Little Gulls", for that is the name of this species that occurs every year at this time in the Sandbanks Provincial Park area. area. Appropriately named, the gull is about the size of a Bonaparte’s gull, and even resembles this diminutive species. As long as the waters of East Lake where we usually see them remains free of ice this month, there will be at least a dozen out there cavorting with the more common species, but you will need a spotting scope to see them as they are often far out. Look for a Bonaparte’s gull, but with black underwings. The best place to search for them is at either the East Lake boat launch off County Road 18, or from the Sandbanks group camping area. Two or three also show up regularly at the mouth of the Outlet River. These gulls are Old World species that first nested at Oshawa in 1962, and now breed sporadically here and there along Lakes Ontario and Erie.

For many people, gulls do not come in species. Everything is a "seagull," a term that causes what few hairs I have left on my head to stiffen. Birders tend to loathe the name "seagull," as we simply do not have seagulls here. True seagulls are rare inland. The majority of what we have in the Quinte area are inland species of gulls. Call them "baygulls," if you like (bagels - get it? Chuckle, chuckle")

There are actually 11 species of gulls on record as having appeared in our area, and I would suspect many of these are apt to be seen in the Tweed area also. Five appear regularly, and among these, the ring-billed, herring, Bonaparte’s and Great Black-backed are the most common.

More times than not, concerns about "seagulls" refer to ring-billed gulls, by far the most numerous. These are the ones that follow farming machinery around in the fields, and beg for French fries at fast food outlets. Around these parts they never get to observe a sea, so the term "seagull" is a gross misnomer, and a term that is frowned upon by seasoned naturalists. Prior to the 1930s, ring-billed gulls were a bit of a rarity, but are our commonest gull today.

But the gull story doesn’t stop there. In Ontario, there are about 20 species of gulls, and at this time of the year, the stragglers and vagrants from other parts of the continent move in. Most of these appear along the Toronto waterfront and at Niagara Falls and Lake Erie area.

Identifying gulls is more than just a case of checking out a typical representative of a given species from your favourite field guide. Some species of gulls take several years to reach adult plumage, and each year produces a slightly different plumage. To add to the confusion, on rare occasions, some gulls like to fool around. A large gull noted one year in Toronto appeared almost the size of a great black-backed whose mantle shade was midway between herring and great black-backed, probably the result of an affair between a great black-backed gull and herring gull. These occasional hybrids create even more confusion with plumages. So the exercise of identifying gulls can become quite complex as foreign species move in during the late fall.

Passionate gull observers can usually depend on checking off about 10 species in these high concentration areas, but one determined observer about a decade ago observed an incredible 14 species. Among them was a Ross’s gull (Siberia and Arctic Canada), California gull (from the west), lesser black-backed gull (European), and a black-legged kittiwake (North Atlantic saltwater gull). A kittiwake was seen two years ago at Sandbanks as part of a two-day feeding frenzy of gulls involving several species that took place just offshore, so who knows what else is out there in our Lake Ontario waters.

So keep your eyes on the gulls from now on. Some are European, some like the Iceland gull are high arctic breeders, some are western and others are coastal, and all are given to wandering. None of the residential birds around here though are technically "seagulls," but there are some interesting species in among the first, second and third-year-plumaged birds, adults and the several species that do occur here on a regular basis.