Gulls far from the sea
Northwoods Notebook

(Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo) The ring-billed gull is the only kind regularly seen in the Iron Mountain area. This one was perched on a light pole in the former Kmart parking lot on the city’s south side.
While picking up pizza and cat food, I found myself caught up in watching the gulls hanging around the parking lot of what used to be Kmart on Iron Mountain’s south side.
They showed little fear of the passing vehicles as they marched across the blacktop, hunting for who knows what in the lot. Perhaps it was the tall lightpoles that attracted them to the property — easy vantage points to spot whatever might present itself on the pavement below. Gulls are, after all, opportunists.
Still, they strike me as a strange bird to be here, far from the harbors and vast shorelines that I’d expect gulls to prefer.
North America has at least 27 native gull species, not including terns. Others can easily wander in on the coasts, from Greenland, Iceland, even Europe in the east or from Asia in the west.
But the gulls that spend time in Iron Mountain are almost certain to be one species: ring-billed.
Confession: I am not in any way a gull expert. I’m far from alone in this — whole Facebook pages and website are devoted to posting photographs of gulls to hash out what they might be. I’ve seen at least one cartoon on those sites joking that most IDs that name other gulls end up being ring-billed. Gulls take a level of birding skill I’ve never been challenged to hone, given I’ve lived most of my life now in the Midwest, especially as an adult.
Gulls can be even more confusing to ID because they may look quite different depending on age and time of year. Even with the ring-billed, a juvenile is mottled brown and white, a first-year winter bird more gray, a second-winter ring-billed surprisingly more speckled in the head. Only the breeding adults have the familiar white head, gray back, black tails and, of course, the black ring on the tip of the bill, offset by white bands.
What can make the task here much simpler is choices tend to be limited this far inland.
While most gulls do favor the coastal saltwater habitats — again, the reason for the more common name, “seagulls” — the ring-billed does just fine deep in the heartlands, near human habitation. This is the gull that cruises over fast-food lots for dropped fries, picks through open garbage cans, and flocks to landfills and farm fields.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website, www.allaboutbirds.org, notes: “In fact, most ring-billed gulls nest in the interior of the continent, near freshwater.”
Hard to believe given its current numbers, but ring-billed gulls had largely vanished from the Great Lakes region in the late 1800s due to “human persecution,” according to the 2006 edition of “National Geographic Complete Birds of North America.”
The All About Birds website notes this as well: “Their populations plummeted during the late nineteenth century, when humans encroached on the birds’ nesting grounds and killed them for feathers to decorate hats. By the early 1900s many breeding sites were defunct. Protection under the 1917 Migratory Birds Convention Act (Canada) and 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act (U.S.) helped bring the species back, and now this species once again thrives across the United States and southern Canada — so numerous in some places that they are considered pests.”
Now, according to the Michigan Breeding Bird Atlas, “The Ring-billed Gull has shown the largest breeding population increases of any colonial waterbird in the Great Lakes and is now the most numerous.”
That’s not to say the region can’t get other gulls coming through. The herring gull is considered common — I’ve photographed one at Six Mile Lake, a juvenile — and nests in the Upper Peninsula as well, with major colonies in Big Bay de Noc and islands off the Garden Peninsula, according to the MBBA.
Herring gulls are larger than ring-billed, but in younger years can have what appears to be rings on their bills, though the mature adults only have a red spot on the lower bill.
But the rest of the gulls seen here are transitory, headed to or from Canada during migration periods. We might get some strays flying between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, perhaps in transit to or from the Atlantic Coast, even Central and South America.
Some birders have made an annual celebration in northern Wisconsin over another gull relative, the parasitic jaegers that migrate through from the Arctic each fall en route to wintering in South America.
What has become known as “Jaeger Fest” is set for this weekend in Superior, Wis. The Wisconsin Society for Ornithology annually organizes this informal gathering to catch sight of this otherwise rare bird to the region.
Parasitic jaegers are dark and very maneuverable, described as being falcon-like, and will chase birds such as gulls and terns to get them to drop their catches, which they then snap up. It’s how they got their name, according to All About Birds: “These birds are ‘kleptoparasites,’ a term used to describe animals that steal their food from other animals. It comes from the same root as ‘kleptomaniac,’ meaning someone who steals compulsively.”
While Superior can offer a prime chance to see jaegers, some of these birds have been seen as well flying offshore as close as Presque Isle Park in Marquette.
The jaegers will be long gone by the time the ice sets in, and likely most of the ring-billed gulls as well. Yet some ring-billed gulls do apparently winter on the Great Lakes, according to several online sources. All About Birds states, “While the species is common on coastal beaches, particularly during winter, many Ring-billed Gulls lead inland lives, never setting eyes on the sea.”
Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.