Visiting Glaucous and Iceland Artic Gulls

Last spring you read here about the common gulls of New England. You met the standard seagull, properly named the herring gull and its two cousins, the larger great black-backed gull and the smaller ring-billed gull. It is time to re-introduce them and learn more, as was promised in that earlier column.

The shopping season is an appropriate time because there is no more avid mall shopper than the gull. Even the smallest parking lot has its resident few, gliding overhead, perched on light poles, or gathered on that hardest and smoothest of beaches, the asphalt pavement.

On a recent visit to the local mall the gulls were on parade in one corner of the lot. Most were standing alert and expectant, but a few crouched down, eyes closed and dozing. If an errant car came close, they would all spring into the air and circle, returning quickly to their places, screaming at the intrusion.

All these birds spend much time at the local landfills still in operation, gleaning unintended handouts from our excess. They even deign to visit the river or lake occasionally, paying homage to their ancient roots. Perhaps the most interesting hangout of all is the playing fields of UMass in Hadley and Amherst. It is as if those fields were built to attract them.

They have come, to sit and rest upon the green expanse, sometimes a thousand or more. The small ring-billed gulls are pasture lovers anyway, adept at finding bugs and worms among the blades, like giant white starlings. However, they do not feed here. Instead, they rest and roost, and perhaps they play.

The word had spread that rare gulls were here among the common, so I visited those fields the other day. Other searchers were there as well, all trying to decipher the intricate plumages and varied sizes of gulls.

It takes three to four years of the scrounging life for a gull to achieve the familiar dark and white pattern. The young bird goes through stages of chocolate brown as well as checkered black and white before the finished product appears. We were searching for two all-white gulls and one medium sized black-backed gull.

This day a hundred or more birds rested in groups upon the trodden grass and mud, and if we got too close to one of the packs, it would rise as one into the air, circling and gaining height until they became the true wild masters of the air they are. They rose in a swarming kettle of birds, suddenly small and flashing in the light of the sun, higher and higher past the tallest building and into the upper heavens.

I had to tear my gaze from the dizzying scene, like Icarus perhaps, afraid to see them plunge to earth when the sun melted their wings. Not too long ago there was a modern fable on the best seller list called Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It was a slight little story about a young gull that tried to fly higher than any other. We like to use our wild creatures to illustrate moral lessons. Here the moral was perseverance, for eventually we found the birds we were looking for.

The Iceland gull was easy. Two first winter birds, dusky white from their black bill to the tips of their wings, were among the many common ones, all of whom sported black wing tips. For the next one we had to wait, chatting and enjoying the bright sun and brisk air. The birds dropped from the air unannounced, and when we turned our gaze back, there was a huge bright white second winter glaucous gull glaring out like a beacon.

The third bird was the hardest, but finally we noticed a second winter lesser black-backed gull, mid-sized between the herring and ring-billed gulls it accompanied. We picked out the special marks of plumage, bill size and color that gave the bird away and were satisfied.

These are all gulls that breed in the Arctic, and a few of the young wander south to us in the winter, searching for that place in the sun, before they can challenge their elders on the more favored wintering grounds. What fitter place than these playing grounds, where they learn more than to shop and squabble over food.