Freezing for gulls

It was a frigid, windy day Monday but that didn’t keep Tom Kerr from celebrating his day off by visiting Goat Island to look at gulls.

Kerr is senior naturalist for the Buffalo Audubon Society. He lives to bird and birds to live with his trusty Vortex spotting scope, affable and open to all, geared up to the weather and enthusiastic enough to be consistently ranked in the Top 5 birders on Niagara County’s E-bird checklists. We are talking about a next-level bird nerd.

On Monday, he started just south of Three Sisters Islands looking through the phragmites, an invasive water plants state parks really needs to remove. Cattails are good, as forageable food for humans and as wildlife habitat. Phragmites are useless.

In a shoal just off shore where so many Niagara Falls kids swam in the 1960s and 70s, Kerr peers into the distance first with his naked eye, then with his binoculars and finally with his tripod-mounted scope. The herring and ringbilled gulls are there. So are the lesser black-backed, a species that has massively increased in numbers in recent years. There are also a pair of glaucous gulls, visitors who spend summers in Alaska and usually can be found on the west coast in winter.

In this winter, those glaucous gulls, and a glaucous-winged gull have been first timers at the Falls, an Important Bird Area (yeah, that’s a real thing.)

Gulls are notoriously hard to identify. They look remarkably alike, especially facing into a 30-mph wind on a 30-degree day, 100 yards out in the river. There are some discerning details Kerr sees others might miss, sometimes the size of the gull, othertimes, buff coloration, a dark eye or bill.

The piece-de-resistance on this day does not show, a vega gull, a vagrant from Siberia that a decade ago would not have been seen as special. The vega was only recently declared its own species, one of several species of the herring gull but unique, remarkable and out of its place in Niagara, a bad Chevy with an aluminum engine.

Several birders visit Kerr, posing for selfies. Finding him birding and taking a selfie is worth 20 points in the Winter Birding Challenge, a collaboration between Audubon and Outside Chronicles. You can register here. https://outsidechronicles.com/challenges/winterbird/

A state park ranger stopped to say hello, on patrol, seeing a flock of birders and checking in, doing her job and marveling in doing the job she has the privilege of calling work.

As Kerr gets ready to relocate, suddenly the gulls stir, taking flight, circling high. At first, there seems to be no reason for the panic. Then the bald eagle becomes apparent – lunch shopping.

It recalls the week in December, 2022, in the days after a woman committed suicide. Her Camry rested in the American rapids, just above the Falls, waiting for a seiche that was a few days yet to come.

There were more people around Goat Island that week than before or since, at least in the cold of winter. As they milled about, rubber necking the tragedy, Kerr looked out and saw one of the resident peregrine falcons appeared and harvested a ringbilled gull, floating through the rapids, noshing. It was more interesting than a car in the river. If only people would look.

Kerr picked up and headed for the bridge between Angelina and Aseneth, the second and third of the Three Sisters, (Celinde is the first island, they were named for the daughters of General Parkhurst Whitney, that's a story for a different day.)

On the bridge, the wind was howling even more. A birder from LaSalle who’d been around all morning followed along. She saw 9 different gulls for the day. ID got a bit tougher because the gulls deal with the wind by facing in. It's easier to know a gull by its butt than its face. Still, it’s another 20-points in the challenge. Gulls face-on are harder to ID. Still, even with the naked eye, they were doing interesting things, picking up a gizzard shad carcass, floating into the wind and drifting back again, dropping it, oblivious to the weather, just like Kerr, lost in the majesty of the place.

Buffalo Audubon is involved in several initiatives in addition to the Winter Birding Challenge, including working to embrace Bird Friendly Buffalo in conjunction with Mayor Sean Ryan. Bird Friendly Niagara could also be a thing if the city were to embrace it.

Bird-positive initiatives include reducing light pollution during migration times and installing special surfaces on windows to protect against bird strikes. One of the biggest nightmares in Western New York as far as bird friendly infrastructure is the Seneca Niagara Casino in Niagara Falls. Hundreds of songbirds hit its glass every spring and fall, tumbling to death below.

A workshop in conjunction with Bird Friendly Buffalo is coming from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21. You can register here for a workshop where you can make a paracord window window treatment to protect your home from bird strikes. https://buffaloaudubon.networkforgood.com/events/95953-bird-friendly-buffalo

The Birds on the Niagara festival was held annually in conjunction with Buffalo Audubon and is scheduled from February 12-16 this year but now stands alone, disassociated from Audubon. Here is a link to all the details available online for the annual festival that is less than a month away.

The Website offers no phone number or email to write for more information but the sponsors from previous years are all listed. Organizers contacted via social media said a schedule and press release will be available “very soon.” https://bird-niagara.org/events/