BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
ARE BIRDERS GULLIBLE?
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw
Well, they should be, at least if they find themselves near any large body of water. You can't be outside on Nantucket more than a moment or two during daylight hours without having a gull in your life. Beginning bird watchers learn to look at every one, just to be sure it's 'just' a gull.

Herring Gull

When birders come to the island for the first time their eyes are forever aloft. If you see a soaring bird on the mainland it is most likely a hawk and something special to be observed. Here, almost all of them are gulls and almost all the gulls are Herring Gulls. In a way, all these gulls in the air are like noise you must sort through in order to find the really good stuff.

I choose to write about Herring Gulls this week because it is a special time for them. The lengthening daylight cycle is triggering changes in their body chemistry so they can be ready for nesting. As we look over a flock of Herring Gulls, say at Jetties Beach, we note startlingly bright white heads.

All winter Herring Gulls' heads are grizzled with grey, giving them a rather weathered appearance, like the shingles on a classic Nantucket house. At this time of year though, Mother Nature has gotten out her paint bucket to refresh the white trim. The older a Herring Gull is, the whiter the head.

Herring Gulls are 'four-year' gulls. It's not until the fourth year that they attain the white bodies and heads along with the silver mantles that reflect their scientific name, Larus argentatus, the silver gull. This name was given by Erik Pontoppidan, the Bishop of Bergen, Norway in the early 1700s. He also named the Arctic Tern and the Common Murre, both birds you can find around Nantucket every year.

Herring Gulls have great longevity for birds. A gull nick-named "Dick" returned for 24 years to a lighthouse in Narragansett Bay in the late 1800s. This was before banding programs but he was recognized by behavior, appearance and voice. More recently banding records show a Herring Gull having lived 28 years.

Still, when we look at the scallop pile at the Jetties it seems only a few of the gulls are silver and white. To the beginner it can look like there are many different gull species when in reality most of them are Herring Gulls. The youngest are solid brown with a black bill. As they age, they acquire a silver back, but their wings are still streaked with brown. Second winter birds show a broad black band at the end of the tail. In all plumages their legs are a fleshy pink color. David Sibley devotes two full pages of illustrations about Herring Gull variations in his book.

In the early 1900s you had to go to Maine to find Herring Gulls nesting. Now they nest south to Chesapeake Bay. Is this global cooling? No, it's just a return to their historic nesting grounds as they were before our ancestors persecuted them for their eggs and flesh. Even in the 1950s Herring Gulls were scarce except in winter on our island. Then the common summer gull was the Laughing Gull, the blackheaded scamp that would steal your french-fries while you ate at the old Skipper on the Easy Street Basin. Now the Skipper is gone and Laughing Gulls are usually only seen during migration.

Herring Gulls nest on Coatue and the more remote beaches at the west end of Nantucket from May through July. Mostly their grass nests are built right on the ground but occasionally in the cedars. Typically three eggs are laid and take just under four weeks to hatch. It can be another month before the youngsters are able to fly but they continue to opportunistically beg for parental support like some of our children. It is estimated that there are more than 35,000 breeding pairs in Massachusetts.

Herring Gulls are always the most likely bird you'll see soaring in our skies. In recent years, though, we've added the Turkey Vulture above us. They tend to look black and tiny-headed, flying with their wings held up in a shallow vee. Think "V" for vulture!

In just a few weeks a tricky summer look-alike for the Herring Gull arrives, the Osprey. These are black and white birds of prey that my Nana Grace used to call "fish hawks." They soar a bit like gulls and have a dihedral crook in their wings when gliding like gulls often do.

My advice to you is always to be gullible. If it's up there and soaring on the wind, it'll be a gull until you

can prove it otherwise. I

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles. If you enjoy 'social' birding, join the Nantucket Bird Club at 8 a.m. Sundays in front of Nantucket High School for a two to three hour birding trip. Call 228-1693 for more information. To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 1-781-259-8805. Find more about Birding Nantucket on the web at http://k-blackshaw. com/BN/BN.htm.