Gull Rescue

I've mentioned in earlier posts about the visible carnage around Dunkirk Harbor, most of it a natural outcome of having a huge gathering of birds in very severe weather. I found  many places where a bird's breast and belly feathers had frozen to the ice or asphalt, and had to be ripped out for the bird to go anywhere.

This looked to me like swan or goose down--a large (foot-long) patch of the softest white down and body feathers. 

The walking wounded--a domestic goose whose foot should be fully hidden in dense feathers. But his flank feathers have been ripped out, most likely by freezing to the ground. Many of the birds I saw had disheveled belly feathers from these events. The temperature hadn't risen above the single digits for weeks. 

I feel similar bare patches on my psyche this winter, things pulled out by this wicked freeze, that ought to have remained in place. It's been a character-building experience. Writing this, I'm looking out at about 9" of compacted snow. A buck, his antlers newly shed, punching through it in a search for seed and corn under the feeder.  I trust by the time this post sees publication, it will all be gone. I hope it will. If this winter's taught me anything, it's not to take anything for granted. March snowstorms, April snowstorms. They happen right here in Ohio. I've been in a May blizzard on Cranberry Mountain in West Virginia. One in June, too, near Steele, North Dakota. Sometimes it snows in June.

 My rehabiliator's heart was aching. I hoped this goose could make it through the rest of this brutal winter with half his flank feathers gone.

All around--death and celebration. A beautiful immature glaucous gull feasting on a red-breasted merganser.

And another young glaucous gull, taking its last rest, frozen into the ice. No one saw it before it was too late.

So when I saw an immature herring gull flapping and struggling on a sidewalk, I broke into a trot. This one, at least, wouldn't die young.

As I ran, I felt in my pocket for my car keys.

The poor thing had settled down, defecated, and its own excrement had run under its belly and frozen solid. Oh, boy. There's a metaphor in that. Stuck in your own frozen sh-t. I feel ya, kid. Let me see what I can do.

Often when I'm flapping my wings against the ground, I'll call Shila. She'll whip out her car keys, deftly scrape my feathers free...

listen to my squawks of protest

tell me it's all going to be OK

and toss me back into the air to fly another day.

Ducks, Glorious Ducks

What a fine bird is the common goldeneye! This magnificent hen was preening her belly when I found her. 

The contortions and pivots, a delight to witness. Look at that tail. I'm counting 14 tail feathers. An oddity of diving duck tails is a variable number of tail feathers. Lots. Most birds have 12 tail feathers. Diving ducks have more. This is the kind of thing bird painters think about. How many, and why, and getting it right. We're always counting feathers.

What a tableau! From back left, greater scaup hen, bufflehead drake, bathing bufflehead hen, greater scaup hen, redhead drake and hen. I almost felt I was back in the Potholes in spring. Except that I was freezing my patootie off, and this was Dunkirk Harbor in New York.

Gotta love a drake redhead made of watered satin. This one looks like he'll return to the Potholes to breed in fine fettle!

The exercise became trying to capture the best ducks in one shot.

Greater scaup, redhead, hooded merganser.

This is my favorite, a redhead and two hoodies. Redheads aren't very large, but hooded mergansers are diminutive little ducks. I adore them--just one big graphic, they are, with their little dinosaurian snoots edged in toothlike lamellae.

I cropped that photo as above for my Facebook cover photo. But the uncropped version is cooler. Note the reflection of a floating herring gull at top.

The gulls are never far away, always assessing the ducks. Feeling OK? Come closer. Let Dr. Hegu take a look.

Now a little shoutout to Bill of the Birds, who has a birthday tomorrow. I will be guiding a birding trip in Costa Rica as you complete another trip around the sun. Happy birthday Bill. I'll wave the green starboard lamp as your ship passes in the night, bound for Argentina.

Unlucky Duck, Wet Hawk

Birding quietly on the shore of Lake Erie, I saw a van pull up. The birders inside pulled out their optics and pointed them in my direction. Eek! I've had that happen before and it freaks me out. I mean, I'll check to see if I recognize someone, but I don't train my scope and binoculars on a person for more than a few seconds. They just kept looking and looking. 

I decided to move toward them, or at least out of the direct field of view, and was relieved to learn that they were looking at something else that, thanks to the docks, was below my field of view. 

I drove over and saw a large immature female Cooper's hawk flap up from the water's edge. 

She was disheveled and soaking wet. Which is a scary thing to be when it's 7 degrees, with a stiff north wind. You can freeze right to your perch if you're not careful. You have to keep moving.

I couldn't imagine that she had been bathing.

And sure enough the birders pointed me to the scene of an epic struggle, in which she had caught and held a greater scaup underwater until it drowned. Holy cow.

They said she got all wet because she kept trying to lift it out of the water. But it was too heavy for her and she eventually gave it up.

The hawk shook her plumage and left in a flurry of droplets. I felt bad for her. I hoped she'd get dry quickly.

I picked the adult drake up and was surprised at how heavy and dense it was for its size. And yet...I felt through the thick breast feathers and down to its keel, and was not surprised to find it severely emaciated, the breast muscles shrunken away from the bladelike keel bone. I doubt that a Cooper's hawk could subdue a greater scaup in good condition.

I laid the scaup out on a rock near where it had died, hoping that the hawk could return and dine on it there. It was a meal hard-won, and I hated to see the bird go hungry.

I looked at the asphalt at the lake's edge and was stunned to see patch after patch of feathers, pulled from the breasts of resting waterfowl who had gotten out of the water, laid down and frozen to the pavement. What a drag to have your coat torn off you in this weather, to have your breast exposed to the freezing water! No wonder there were so many birds dying all around.

It occurred to me that if I lived anywhere near Dunkirk Harbor, I would probably have a garage and basement full of baby wading pools and compromised ducks, geese and gulls. As I stood on the shore, I could feel the weird energy of all the birds' combined travail and suffering. It set up a fluttering in my heart, a sympathetic vibration, that imbued the entire experience with a tinge of sadness. I wanted to help them all, but I couldn't.

This is a place with its own energy, one of combined joy and loss--a clanging fracas of gulls and ducks, studded with elegiac signs of death and loss. When I'm in a place like this, I sometimes wish I could turn down the side of me that is so keenly aware of suffering. But if I could, I wouldn't be me anymore.

The Winter Gulls

In a tough winter, the cool big gulls from the Far North come down to our ever-so-slightly warmer climes to find open water and food. King of them all is the hulking glaucous gull, shown here absolutely dwarfing herring and ring-billed gulls. They can be larger than the great black-backed, and they have a distinctive look, with a big puffy head and, by proportion, a small-looking dark eye. 

They also have the grace to be nearly all white, even down to the primary flight feathers. So it's not tough to pick a glaucous gull, like this immature bird, out of a flock of sleeping herring and ring-billed gulls. Herring gulls have the red bill spot, while ring-bills have a black ring around the bill tip. The chocolatey gulls in this shot are young herrings. By this time of winter, young ring-bills, like the bird on the left edge of the photo, look much like adults, with a lot of gray mantle feathers showing. That's because a ring-bill is a two-year gull, while the herring takes four years to attain adult plumage. 

Every once in awhile, the glaucous gull would spread its wings and hop a few feet, then settle down again. Wow.

A few dozen birds over, an immature Iceland gull rested. It's dead center, with the black bill tip and the white primaries. Icelands are smaller than glaucous gulls, but their plumage is similar.

All around, rafts of diving ducks floated. Two beautiful drake white-winged scoters joined the greater scaup and common goldeneyes. I love the white eye crescent (actually feathers behind the eye, whose iris is also white). At a distance, it looks like they're winking at you.

A female common merganser arrows by. The clean white patch beneath her chin and the spotless breast, contrasting with a clear-cut sienna head, differentiates her from a red-breasted merganser. There were easily 1,000 common mergs in a single raft out there. Whoo.

I lucked into four long-tailed ducks in the two days I birded Dunkirk Harbor. This is as close as I could get. Two have hauled out onto the ice at the rear right of the photo. You can see their dark round cheek spots. I absolutely love combing through flocks of waterfowl, looking for the new and different.

I mentioned the abundance of death in my first post. When you get this many birds crowded into one spot, some of them are going to die. Disease and starvation take their toll. Some haul out and freeze right to the ice. It must be an awful way to go. When the temperatures hover around zero F for weeks at a time, somebody's going to die. 

I have heard recently that great black-backed gulls around Cape Cod have been observed this winter, holding diving ducks underwater until they drown, then eating them. This is probably slightly outside the normal GBBG foraging behavior, especially at the frequency with which it's being seen. But cultural trends travel like wildfire in birds. As a bird rehabilitator, I know that if you want to get a bird to do something, put its cage next to that of a bird who knows how to do it. Birds learn largely by copying what their neighbors are doing. This is why, in late summer, I'll see young scarlet tanagers, common yellowthroats and orioles (insectivores for the most part) coming in to investigate seed feeders, wondering if there's anything there for them. Everybody else seems to be finding food there. Let's give it a try.

With the number of birds freezing to the ice or dying from starvation here, I doubt this young great black-backed (black tail) or glaucous gull (mocha-white overall) had to drown the red-breasted merganser to get a meal. A herring gull picks at a dead shad in the next booth at the Macabre Cafe.

The glaucous gull dipped its merganser breast filet repeatedly in harbor water, then flew off with its prize.

Despite the death of the merganser, it made me feel good to see everybody eating on such a frigid day. I dug into a jar of almonds and thought about how nice it was to be in a heated metal capsule, swaddled in goosedown, eating almonds instead of frozen merganser. I remain in the thrall of birds, who have no such place to retreat, and routinely survive conditions that would kill me in a matter of minutes.

Duck Duck Goose... Swan!

Diving ducks are such fun to watch, the way they suddenly arc and disappear, then pop up like corks yards away. Odd as it seems, they bathe all the time. They seem to enjoy it. But they also need to bathe.

A little drake bufflehead dunks his face as two greater scaup preen and dabble.

He shuffles and lets the water into his feathers, then squeezes it out. I call buffleheads "Sea Chickadees." Only the ruddy could possibly give them competition in the Cutest Duck pageant.

He seems to enjoy his bath (here his head is completely inverted as he squeezes the water out of his breast feathers). But he also has to bathe, has to keep his feathers spotless and grease-free, for they are all that are between him and the single-digit cold, cold so stark it takes my breath away in seconds when I leave the car. It's seven degrees and he's bathing. 

A hen canvasback preens those all-important belly feathers. I'm so delighted to see this little tank out of water that I don't even notice the large cream-colored lump in the lower left of the frame.

Still diggin' the canvasback. Lots of snow drifts...

just like on the tundra...swan!! Oh hello! Your cryptic coloration was working fine! I'm delighted to see its red smile line, as well as its little yellow loral spot.

File under: what I love about birdwatching. Birding in a place like Dunkirk Harbor is just one surprise after another. It's like opening one of those stacking Russian dolls. I've little doubt I missed a lot of what was there, for there was so much there, but I surely enjoyed what I did see.

Here's the drake canvasback, his ruby eye glowing improbably in a burnt sienna face. Not sure who thought up that color scheme, but it's a fetching one. What a glorious duck, all swooping curves. Canvasback because he's as white as canvas. Which no one hardly uses any more, except in sails and better tote bags. The old names are so evocative, but we rarely think of why we use them. Will we have nylonbacks in the future?

The terra-cotta containers reflect on the water, making a lovely painting as another drake takes off.

It's such fun to shoot these ducks flying against pier, rock, smokestack, container. Compositionally, I'd have placed the heavy pier to the left, but oh well. A mallard leaves.

Look! Canadian geese! Lots of them there.

That, and seagulls. Yes. I am messing with you birders.

Goldeneyes, Scaup and Industrial Grit

I spent a couple of days recently in New York, one of my objectives being to do some winter birding. Not surprisingly, Lake Erie was frozen solid. It's a shallow lake, and it freezes pretty quickly. In a winter like this, everything seems to have frozen over. Me included.

Ice several feet thick puts an unequivocal damper on lakeshore birding. There was nothing around for miles and miles. A quick search of eBird, though, revealed that there were some interesting things happening around Dunkirk Harbor. Only a warm-water outlet could explain that. I made my way along the jumbled frozen lakefront toward three tall stacks belching smoke and steam. That was where the birds would be.

And sure enough, a coal-fired power plant was warming the water sufficiently to open part of it to fish, ducks, and gulls. Local birders I spoke with said that the plant was operating at only a fraction of capacity, and that there's normally much  more open water than I saw. Never having been here, I was all agog.

 

A pair of mallards flies past containers in the harbor, the male's green head glowing Kryptonite. 

Common goldeneye drakes were feeling frisky despite the extreme cold (it was about 7 degrees, with a wind chill of I don't want to know). These two are performing head throws, which nicely spotlight their shining white cheek discs. To the right is a drake greater scaup.

More greater scaup, a drake (top) and two hens. See how the white stripe goes down into the primary wing feathers, almost to the tip? Lesser scaup have white only in the secondaries, so only the inner half of the wing has white. Here's a hen lesser scaup from last winter's Virginia trip. Half a wing stripe. It's obvious in flight, and it's the easiest way to tell them apart at a glance.

Here's a close view of a drake greater scaup (white-winged scoter in back!)  The unequivocal green gloss on its smooth round head is a good field mark for this species. Lesser scaup are more delicate, with thinner, longer-looking necks. Instead of being smoothly rounded, their heads are peaked like Daffy Duck's, with a purple sheen. The sleeping brown duck in the foreground is a female greater scaup.

Even closer. The greater scaup has a broad blue bill, with a large black "nail" on its tip. Lesser scaup's bill is narrower, and the nail is smaller. These may seem subjective, but when you've got a greater scaup, you just know it. 

I love this image of greater scaup scudding by smokestacks. Dunkirk Harbor is a gritty place, and the burgeoning bird life is a sharp contrast to aging stacks, container ships, and the piles of coal around the old power plant. 

The scaup floated in vast rafts, along with thousands of common mergansers, mixed flocks of red-breasted and hooded mergansers, canvasback, redheads, goldeneye, bufflehead, and white-winged scoters.

 

All around swirled thousands upon thousands of gulls, mostly herring and great black-backed. 

In the warmed waters of the harbor, the triangular dorsal fins of thousands of shad roiled and tossed. I'm not sure what was going on, but it was a shad event to be sure. 

And wherever thousands of any life form gather closely together, death follows. Dead shad floated all around. The gulls hauled them up onto the ice to carve them up.

It was a macabre cafe, a gull cafeteria. Nearly every bird had its own frozen fish to pick at. The gulls were doing very well here, reaping the abundance of death. 

And under the piers, the buffleheads slept with Brother Canvasback*.

*thanks to Hap in Minnesota and Bottomland Mud for chimping me!