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A Tale of Two Gulls
On Thursday of last week, an Ivory Gull was discovered in Flint, Michigan, prompting the sort of delightful madness that overcomes the birding community when a bird like this turns up anywhere away from northern Alaska. For a few days dozens of birders enjoyed the thin, pale fluke as it foraged along the Flint River, seemingly eating regularly and appearing more or less healthy right up until the moment it didn’t. On Monday it was discovered dead, and packed off to be preserved as a study skin at a University of Michigan museum. A sad, if noble and productive, end.
The Michigan Ivory Gull in more active times. Photo: Brendan Klick / Macaulay Library
This is the second arctic gull this year to meet an end that was documented by birders. The Monterey, California, Ross’s Gull from this past January saw a much more dramatic fate. That bird was seemingly a victim of its naiveté, becoming the target a pair of resident Peregrine Falcons, but who is to say that conditions wouldn’t have met the same end as so many Ivory Gulls have. Arctic species rarely manage well in the lower latitudes, and gulls in particular seem to be susceptible to aspergillosis, a fungal infection that seems to stems from eating moldy food. It remains to be seen whether the Michigan Ivory Gull suffered from the respiratory ailment that results from such an infection, but aspergillosus has felled Ivory Gulls in Georgia, Minnesota, and California in recent years.
In the case of both gulls there was a fair bit of sadness. While we all sort of understand that the ultimate fate of many birds that end up in many places that are unfamiliar to them is, with a few exceptions, the same as what befell these two gulls, we are rarely faced with that fact so overtly.
There has been no shortage of drama surrounding the welfare of birds from the far north venturing south where they are, well, some might call it besieged, by birders and photographers who wish to see them. Northern owls, with their impressive size and rarity and innate indifference to humans, seem to attract the majority, but arctic gulls get no small amount, too. People get attached to individuals, especially lost ones, and their death often invokes hand-wringing and guilt, as if any birder could have made the aspergillosus bite less or kept the peregrines at bay.
It is not my intention to judge birders for how they relate to this, or any, bird. I think that we are capable of both succumbing to the draw of seeing an Ivory Gull and also expressing concern about whether the presence of this bird in this place is a troubling harbinger of the conditions in its range. In fact, I’d argue that we should do both. Nor does sadness at the passing of this bird mean we care any less for the issues that concern our familiar resident species, like reflective surfaces on buildings and feral cats. We birders contain multitudes, after all.
We ascribe meaning to these lost birds because it means something to us. To our community and to our passion and to the memories that we choose to make. It’s remarkable enough that we cross paths with these birds in the first place, and the pleasure in the interaction doesn’t need to fade even when we are assured of the bird’s fate.
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Source: http://blog.aba.org/2017/03/a-tale-of-two-gulls.html
