Herring Gull at Canal Park

Just about every winter afternoon, birders gather in Canal Park in Duluth to watch gulls. The gulls spend their mornings feeding at the Superior landfill on Wisconsin Point and various other points in the area, and in afternoon start moseying in to roost on the lake for the night. For a couple of hours, a great many of them join the Mallards close to the break-walls along the shipping canal.

Gulls in Canal Park

Some birders toss out bread, which draws many of the gulls right in, easy to photograph and identify, even without a spotting scope. Of course, the gulls don’t stay that close to the shore to roost at night, so a scope is handy for watching the birds already settling in for the night. 

Mike Hendrickson tossing bread to draw in gulls at Canal Park

This year, SEVEN species of gulls have been regularly occurring at Canal Park and various spots in Duluth and Superior, and I saw all seven in Canal Park on Saturday afternoon. Two are on my Conservation Big Year target list of birds of conservation concern: Thayer’s and Iceland Gull. Both look confusingly similar to Herring Gulls, but nest in very remote areas and so little is known about them except that their carcasses outnumber those of other birds after large oil spills in their breeding areas. 

Thayer’s Gull at Canal Park

Iceland Gull at Canal Park

Much rarer in the Midwest than Iceland or Thayer’s is the Slaty-backed Gull, a species never recorded in Minnesota before 2006. Rare as it is, the Slaty-back is not a species of conservation concern because it is so common in the northern Pacific, where it breeds from Siberia to Japan; small numbers breed in Alaska.

Minnesota’s first Slaty-backed Gull, in Grand Marais in 2006

These two Slaty-backed Gull shots were digiscoped by Larry Kraemer

Slaty-backed Gull (center) in Lake Superior off Canal Park From the other side of the continent, Great Black-backed Gulls are appearing more and more often at our end of the Great Lakes, but this largest of all gulls is most abundant on the Atlantic coast.  Great Black-backed Gull on Long Island in August 2009 Glaucous Gulls from the far north round out the species hardest to find in Minnesota.

Glaucous Gull

Herring Gulls, by far the most abundant gulls here in winter, have so many plumage variations that they’re tricky to separate from some of the others. The Ring-billed Gull, abundant in summer, doesn’t really belong here in winter, but a few individuals have been spending the season here. These are the gulls most associated with mooching food from summer picknickers, and some of the individuals wintering in Duluth don’t give up the habit easily. One stayed on the wall waiting for handouts and was so persistent about approaching me that I kept having to step backwards in order to get all of it in a photo. 

Ring-billed Gull at Canal Park

Ring-billed Gull at Canal Park

Some gull aficionados up here offer classes in Gull ID, and if you’re patient and get to Canal Park when experts are there, they can point out the rarer species. If you’re anything like me, though, you want to figure out your own birds. Gull identification takes patience, persistence, and careful study, but when conditions are right, it’s quite doable. You’ll need a good field guide, such as the National Geographic—read all the entries of the likely species and study the photos at home before setting out. I also love Steve Howell and Jon Dunn’s excellent Gulls of the Americas, a Peterson Reference Guide. It’s important when mastering any group of birds to not get emotionally attached to your conclusions or prickly or stubborn in the face of questions about your identifications, and important to realize that gulls show a lot of variation and do sometimes hybridize, so even in perfect light at close range, top experts can get stumped, and when a bird is at a distance or doesn’t show itself from every angle, it may just not be identifiable. It’s that difficulty level, along with the understanding that the rarer of these gulls have wandered in from great distances, that makes gull identification so very rewarding and even thrilling.

Jan Kraemer scanning gulls at Canal Park

Larry Kraemer digiscoping gulls at Canal Park

Peder Svingen studying gulls at Canal Park

 New species for day:

1.  Common Merganser 
2. Slaty-backed Gull 
3. Iceland Gull 
4. Glaucous Gull 
5. House Sparrow 

(New total= 41 species)

Miles driven =13, +267 previous = 280 total.

You there?

The main thrust of my Conservation Big Year is to see, photograph, and write about as many birds as I can, focusing primarily on species of conservation concern while enjoying everything else out there as well. And I’ll be most intent on visiting places that I consider especially significant in terms of conservation. But how I do all this birding is equally important. I don’t have the money, time, or energy to race about the countryside every day. To maintain my resources and stay excited all year, I’m trying to pace myself. But even on “down days,” I want to be mindful of every bird I encounter, and to enjoy all the birds around me. One of my goals is to get into the habit of reporting my sightings to eBird. Even though my day total today was a mere 8 species, I posted my checklist on eBird, meaning I had to make a complete count or as accurate an estimate of the number of each species as possible. And another goal is to have fun no matter what I’m seeing. That’s easy when I’m home! My chickadees persistently come to my hand for mealworms. Chickadee flocks wander about a fairly large area all day, returning to favorite feeding spots repeatedly. When they arrive in my yard, one or two will come to the box elder right out the second story window by my desk. One in particular often alights on the windowsill to give me a long, hard stare if I don’t instantly jump up to feed them. When I’m downstairs in the dining room, I notice that that one or another sometimes hovers and looks in at us, too. I’ve never seen a chickadee do this at any window of any other house in my neighborhood, and am absolutely certain that they realize this is the one house that contains a trained human with a supply of mealworms.

Yes, I’m talking to YOU!

  In the hand, I can feel that some chickadees are noticeably heavier than others. One is shyer than the rest. At first that one would flutter over my hand for several passes before alighting, and often just give up and head to a feeder instead. Now it’s consistently alighting on my hand, but if I move even a tiny bit, it vanishes! Most of them grab and mealworm and fly off, but one often starts eating right there. I don’t know if I find it more sweet that it trusts me so much or more yucky, because after that one comes, I have to go wash a goopy mess of mealworm innards off my hand. By their interactions, I can tell which are ranked higher or lower in the flock’s hierarchy. Assuming it’s always the same one alighting on the window (they’re not color-banded, so I have no way of being certain), that one seems to be in about the middle of the flock hierarchy. When it’s the only one there, it races to my hand the moment I crack open the window. But when other chickadees are about, it sits in a nearby branch while one or two come to my hand first. Now that it’s January, any discord in establishing the flock hierarchy has been settled, and I virtually never hear the gargle call or other signals that one is taking its turn before higher-ranking ones. A pair of White-breasted Nuthatches and at least four Red-breasted Nuthatches are often about, and they can’t help but notice what the chickadees are up to. They’re much more skittish around me than the chickadees are. At least two Red-breasted Nuthatches have come to my hand, but not reliably–they are more likely to watch for several minutes and make a couple of passes but then give up. One day a White-breasted Nuthatch alighted, but not since, even though a male and female are often within 6 or 8 feet watching as the chickadees feed.

Boo Boo

 
 Birds aren’t the only things I notice out there. My yard still has several gray squirrels. I watch out for one individual in particular–she has a nasty bald patch on her back that is apparently ringworm. It’s not been growing, but during the most frigid days I’ve been concerned about exposure and frostbite, so when I see her, I make sure she has a peanut, walnut, or other nice morsel–Russ bought me a bag of mixed nuts especially for her. White she’s eating, or when she’s resting on a high branch in a patch of sunshine she keeps her tail over her back, providing some protection, so I’m hoping my looking out for her will help her recover. I’ve seen red squirrels, white-tailed deer, and even a Norway rat so far, but fortunately none in my own neighborhood.

Totals for day:

Species: 8
New: 0
Miles: 0