October 2018

Fall Birding the Keene, New Hampshire, Area

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Ash Brook Wetland. All photographs by the author.

Ash Brook Wetland

Despite hosting droves of breeding Red-winged Blackbirds during the summer, Ash Brook Wetland often lacks a strong icterid presence on autumn days. Yet on certain days in October and November, flocks numbering in the hundreds will pass through the wetland. Ash Brook Wetland is best accessed from the south, after parking near the Target store at Monadnock Marketplace (42.929317, -72.300871) and walking behind the store where a paved access road begins. See Map 1: Ash Brook Wetland. The access road stretches 0.2 mile before intersecting with the Cheshire Rail Trail, which runs nearly 35 miles from the Massachusetts border to Walpole, New Hampshire.

Just behind the Target store stands a row of conifer trees that can be a great place to locate foraging Cape May, Pine, and Blackpoll warblers during fall. Past the conifers the expanse of wetlands appears. Although little open water is visible from the access road, there are a few vantage points to check for ducks, geese, and grebes. Listen here for Swamp Sparrows singing late in the season, and look closely through the reeds for Marsh Wrens. Both species also occur in the wet drainage ditch west of the access road before the grassy field starts. Depending on the time of day, one of the best spots for photographing warblers is along the forest edge west of the access road at its southern terminus. A total of 21 warbler species have been observed at Ash Brook Wetland and, on some mornings in the fall, the branches seem to drip color as large, mixed-species foraging flocks of warblers and vireos move through the trees.

The grassy shoulders alongside the access road yield high numbers of sparrows during the fall, and some days can offer seven species in a single walkthrough. Lincoln's, White-crowned, and Field sparrows are good highlights here, and large flocks of Song and Savannah sparrows are noteworthy in their own right. Upon reaching the Cheshire Rail Trail (frequently referred to as the "bike path"), one has the option of traveling east, west, or continuing north to Pitcher Street. Dog-walkers and birders alike often park where Pitcher Street meets the rail trail (42.931576, -72.302302), but there is no designated parking area. Heading west veers away from Ash Brook Wetland but offers thicker patches of forest, several backyard bird feeders, and a corridor of shrubby vegetation under the power line that runs parallel to the bike path. Heading east, on the other hand, offers additional wetland views and thick hedgerows. Northern Mockingbirds, Gray Catbirds, and Brown Thrashers enjoy the dense foliage and are most frequently observed foraging along the edges of the rail trail, perched in the trees, or surveying the wetland from the telephone wires. On the north side of the bike path, east of the access road, the wetter areas are worth checking for Northern Waterthrush, Common Yellowthroat, and Palm Warbler.

Red-tailed Hawks enjoy scanning for prey from perches up and down the radio tower on the eastern side of Ash Brook Wetland. Although the wetland lacks the expansive views of many hawkwatch sites, the skies above the wetland and nearby field are devoid of trees, offering decent views of migrating raptors. Looking southwest over the wetland toward the Horatio Colony Preserve ridgeline can yield lone accipiters and buteos, Turkey Vultures, and small kettles of Broad-winged Hawks.

If time allows, or walking around the wetland turns up few birds, a quick stop by Antioch University New England can be fruitful.

Map 1. Ash Brook Wetland.

Antioch University New England

Starting north of Ash Brook Wetland, head east along the Cheshire Rail Trail. Continue walking along the bike path, crossing the pedestrian bridge over Route 9, until you reach the University 0.4 mile from the junction with Pitcher Street. Alternatively, you could park at the University (42.931820, -72.294804), but this space is generally reserved for students, faculty, and staff. More parking is available in the Kohl's Plaza (42.932366, -72.295681), where a cut-through between the Famous Footwear and Great Clips businesses provides quick access to the rail trail.

Bird feeders are located all along the eastern side of the university building, with two main feeder stations positioned in front of the main entrance and library windows. This second feeder station is the largest and is a mere 20 yards from the rail trail. The feeders, maintained by the Antioch Bird Club, are nearly always active, and the wooded patches to the north and south of the bike path provide ample foraging opportunities for a diversity of songbirds. As with most feeders, the occasional Cooper's and Sharp-shinned hawks swoop by, and both species are most often seen perched in the trees above the feeders or along the rail trail. Across from the University, to the south of the rail trail, a dirt patch is indirectly maintained by the city of Keene, which uses the site for dumping excess snow during winter months. As a result, mixed-species sparrow flocks forage here throughout the fall. Highlights include Lincoln's Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, and a pair of Dickcissels found in early October of 2017. Following rain showers, the dirt patch usually pools with water, which can attract songbirds and the odd shorebird.

Dickcissel pair found October 2017.

Tucked into the trees on the north side of the bike path, two brush piles are hidden. The larger one is positioned near the open lawn on the west side of the university building, and the smaller pile is about 30 meters east of the bird feeders. Sparrows and the resident Carolina Wren frequently visit both locations. On the south side of the bike path, the powerline corridor is dominated by sumac trees and young aspen, which host early-successional forest obligates such as Prairie Warbler, Eastern Towhee, Brown Thrasher, and Indigo Bunting.

Ashuelot River Park

Parking is available in the Elm City Bagels plaza (42.932905, -72.287792) at the junction of Island Street and West Street. See Map 2: Ashuelot River Park. From the parking lot the main trail loops through a small open area before heading due north. Although the open green can be busy with people enjoying yard games in the afternoons and evenings, mornings are relatively quiet and devoid of human activity. West and a bit north of the green a dam-restricted impoundment of water often hosts waterfowl, including Mallards and American Black Ducks. Great Blue Herons frequently visit the down-river side of the dam to forage. A suspension bridge crossing the river (just north of the green) provides excellent viewing of the river upstream and downstream of the dam. This location is also a great place to watch flocks of Cedar Waxwings pick insects out of the air above the water's surface.

Ashuelot River Park.

From the bridge, two options of travel present themselves: following a trail up the western side of the Ashuelot River, or following the Jonathan Daniels Trail (JDT) along the eastern side. Taking the western option offers a good mix of habitats, ranging from floodplain forest and open wetland, to shrubby habitat under the power line corridor. One of my best encounters on this trail, a Rusty Blackbird, was found in the shrubs along the river bank not 200 feet from the bridge. Checking this area and similar microhabitats on either side of the river can also turn up Northern Waterthrush. Listen and watch for Belted Kingfishers and swallows as they forage along the waterway.

Taking the JDT offers more mixed deciduous-coniferous forests than the western trail and passes two oxbow ponds and forested wetlands. Additionally, an abandoned lot with patches of vegetation lies off the east side of the JDT about 200 feet north of the suspension bridge. I have yet to find any out-of-the-ordinary species here, but barring any redevelopment plans, I imagine the lot will turn into a sparrow haven over the next few years as nonwoody plants continue to proliferate. Continuing northward, the JDT meanders around the back of an apartment complex and passes the first, and largest, oxbow pond on the left. Not much farther along the trail, a second oxbow pond appears on the right, partially hidden by dense vegetation. Despite the dense canopy cover and thinness of the water feature, Wood Ducks are still attracted to these ponds throughout the fall.

Roughly 0.8 mile from the suspension bridge, the JDT forms a T-intersection with the Appel Way Trail. Moving west on the trail takes pedestrians underneath Route 9 to Wheelock Park (0.7 mile), which is a suitable place to watch for migrating Common Nighthawks in late August and early September. Heading east from the T-intersection, the trail ends at Court Street after an easy 0.2-mile jaunt along the forested pathway.

Perhaps one of the understated features of the JDT, at least from a birding perspective, is the relative quietness of the pathway underfoot. Despite being covered by forest canopy almost its entire length, falling leaves are constantly crushed by foot traffic. The popularity of the trail, especially for cycling commuters and joggers, helps maintain the quiet footing, which increases one's chances of hearing distant birds and decreases the likelihood of flushing birds out of sight.

For birders in need of a quick breakfast or energy boost, Elm City Bagels and the local Starbucks café are located on West Street adjacent to Ashuelot River Park.

Map 2. Ashuelot River Park.

Krif Road

Relative to other birding hotspots in and around Keene, Krif Road boasts the greatest amount of agricultural acreage. Additionally, most of the field edges have drainage ditches that supply a substantial amount of dense grasses and shrubs, much to the delight of sparrows. Clay-colored and Vesper sparrows have been found here in small numbers. Tennessee and Connecticut warblers have also been reported from the forested and shrubby edges around the field. Visiting Krif Road in the evening in early fall, you can witness flights of migrating Common Nighthawks or have a rare look at a Short-eared Owl. See Map 3: Krif Road, Dillant-Hopkins Airport, and environs.

At the corner of Comwell Drive and Krif Road, the southern end of the field often becomes flooded after rainstorms. This large, shallow pool often attracts migrating waterfowl, including teal, American Black Ducks, and Snow Geese. Mixed flocks can number in the hundreds. Shorebirds are an uncommon sight during migration in Keene, but Krif Road is one of the best places to look.

Birding Krif Road and Comwell Drive can be done by car, which is convenient during snaps of cold weather. Wide shoulders along the road allow for ample parking, but the best place to park is at the east end of Krif Road in the pulloff on the north side of the road (42.914714, -72.285658), at the gate to Keene State College's Owl Athletic Complex. Generally, Krif Road and Comwell Drive do not see much vehicular traffic, and pulling off to the side anywhere for a brief amount of time is not frowned upon. There is a UPS facility at the north end of Comwell Drive, so take care to leave plenty of room for large trucks to pass by.

Map 3. Krif Road, Dillant-Hopkins Airport, and environs.

Dillant-Hopkins Airport and Airport Road

Of all the local birding places around Keene, Dillant-Hopkins Airport and Airport Road along its perimeter boast perhaps the greatest diversity of habitat. Unique to the airport is the extensive grassland surrounding the airport's two runways. Mature deciduous and pine forests, forested wetland, freshwater marsh, and shrubland surround the airport in a complex, bird-rich mosaic.

Airport Road.

To get to the airport from Keene, travel east on NH-101. Take a right onto main Street/NH-12 South, and travel 0.9 mile before turning right onto Old Homestead Highway/NH-32 South. Two-tenths of a mile after turning onto Old Homestead Highway, turn right onto Airport Road.

Driving down Airport road, the view opens to the right at 0.1 mile. This area is worth checking for American Kestrel and Vesper Sparrow perched on the fence line. Thirteen other sparrow species have been observed at the airport, most notably Grasshopper Sparrow, which is best found at airports across New England. In late fall, this open patch of land hosts American Pipit, Snow Bunting, and Horned Lark. At 0.5 mile, just after the airport parking lot, there is a gate. The gate blocks vehicular traffic to the Keene Waste Water Treatment facility on weekends, but it is open Monday-Friday from 6:30 am to 3:00 pm. Even if the gate is locked, public foot-traffic is welcome at any time. Free parking is available outside the airport building (42.906949, -72.272560), and the lot here is never full. When the gate is open, birders can drive in and park anywhere along the side of the road. Be courteous to drivers going to and from the plant, and pull off far enough to leave room for them to pass. Thankfully, the road is rarely busy.

Starting at the gate, Airport Road bisects a thin strip of wetland. Here you can see bitterns and herons in addition to the more standard Marsh Wren, Swamp Sparrow, and Red-winged Blackbird. After the wetland the road passes through a mixed deciduous-pine forest where all six common woodpecker species can be found until most Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers and Northern Flickers depart in late October.

After moving through the forest, the road curves to the southwest 0.3 mile after the gate. On the right, a short dirt road leads toward agriculture fields along the Ashuelot River. The forest at the end of the dirt road is the Keene State College Wildlife Management Area and is open to the public year-round. The start of the dirt road is a good place to park and has enough room for cars to pull completely off Airport Road. Just after the junction with the dirt road, Airport Road cuts through a large, open tract of wetland. The wetland itself hosts a variety of microhabitats, from dense stands of cattails to semi-dry clusters of shrubs. Ground crews at Dillant-Hopkins airport cut back the vegetation here every few years, which maintains a low-cut wet field with bushy patches. The shrubs here often attract a Northern Shrike during the winter months, but they can be seen as early as late fall. This general area can present large mixed- and single-species blackbird flocks. Rusty Blackbirds are most frequent here in September and October.

The road begins to turn southeast 0.5 mile from the gate, and early-successional forest rises up on either side of the road. This corner of Airport Road is spectacular for photographing mixed-species foraging flocks of warblers in first light. After the turn, mature forested wetlands dominate both sides of the road. Relative to other areas near Keene, Pileated Woodpeckers can be observed here semi-regularly. Wood Ducks, with their adept maneuvering skills, can often been seen slowly swimming through the wetlands on either side of the road. Starting 0.9 mile after the gate, the forest on the east side of the road thins out, and views of the open airport lands are regained. The large wetland on the east side of Airport Road, beginning 1.1 miles after the gate, is another place to check for flocks of waterfowl. You can observe shorebirds, ranging from Spotted Sandpiper to Greater Yellowlegs, here and at the first wetland if the water is shallow enough. Approximately 1.5 miles after the gate, the road ends at the gate to the Keene Waste Water Treatment Plant. There is no convenient place to turn around, since the road past the facility's gate is off limits, but there is enough room for most cars to perform a three-point turn.

Similar to Krif Road, the wetlands often flood, providing a large expanse of shallow water for waterfowl to rest and forage. Common Merganser, Hooded Merganser, Green-winged and Blue-winged teal, and Wood Duck, among other waterfowl, typically stop over during the fall. Alas, many waterfowl at this location seem to be one-day wonders. Other notable fall migration sightings at the airport include large numbers of Great Egret, Northern Harrier, Sora, Upland Sandpiper, Yellow-bellied and Olive-sided flycatchers, Philadelphia Vireo, and Blackpoll Warbler.

Wilson Pond

Wilson Pond stands out as one of the most accessible bodies of standing water in the Keene area. Just a short drive from downtown Keene, Wilson Pond is a 72-acre pond with an average depth of seven feet. Just 0.8 mile south on Old Homestead Highway/NH-32 from the airport entrance, Wilson Pond is an easy addition to birding trips to the airport. Common species at Wilson Pond in the fall include Hooded and Common mergansers, Ring-necked Duck, Common Loon, and various dabbling ducks and geese. More notable observations include White-winged and Black scoters, Bufflehead, Ruddy Duck, Red-throated Loon, and Double-crested Cormorant. Each of these species regularly occurs along the New Hampshire coast, but they are a treat for Cheshire County birders. A small dirt pulloff serves as a parking space (42.898245, -72.263581) and provides access to a public boat ramp.

Steven Lamonde is an avid birder and recent graduate of Antioch University New England, where he obtained his MS in Conservation Biology. While at Antioch, Steven served as a Golden-winged Warbler graduate research assistant to Audubon Vermont., He also co-directed the Antioch Bird Club, which organizes regional birding trips and offers educational walks and talks for community members. Steven has traveled extensively throughout New England in search of birds, particularly wood warblers and raptors.

The Secret Lives of the Gulls of Appledore

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Appledore is a tubby looking island on a map—roughly rubber-ducky-shaped, one of my students decided. It is the largest of the Isles of Shoals, an archipelago straddling the line between New Hampshire's and Maine's jurisdictions. In summer, the island is crawling with undergraduates taking classes and working research internships through the Shoals Marine Laboratory, a project jointly overseen by the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University. Spring and fall migration seasons bring a cadre of songbird banders who work the mist nets from predawn until well past supper time. Tourists visit the historic site of nineteenth-century poet Celia Thaxter's garden (immortalized in paintings by American impressionist Childe Hassam), and groups of sustainability-minded engineering students work on thorny problems of life on an island six miles out.

Figure 2. Banding and blood sampling a Great Black-backed Gull. Only a very small amount of blood is required to perform DNA sexing on the bird. Photograph by Luis Robles.

For our team of researchers, student assistants, and interested gull enthusiasts, however, Appledore is first and foremost a gull colony. Herring Gulls build their grassy cup nests on the island's exposed rocky skirt, and Great Black-backed Gulls select the more vegetated sites a bit farther back (Figure 1). The gulls of Appledore are habituated to humans and will tolerate foot traffic close to their nests. Still, visitors to the island receive a cautionary talk upon arrival advising them to hold sticks above their heads while walking to draw the ire of particularly defensive gull parents—the birds will strike the highest point on their target—and to wear a bicycle helmet when entering the densest areas of the colony.

Our research on the gulls of Appledore was started by Dr. Julie Ellis, an ecologist, now at the University of Pennsylvania, who was interested in how gulls affected the island's ecology and trophic web. She started banding individual birds in 2004, and since then thousands of gulls have been captured, measured, and blood-sampled for DNA determination of sex by the project's team members (Figure 2). The focus of the project has changed over the years as different scientists have pursued their own interests. Sometimes the studies were on behavior, sometimes on eggshell pigment, sometimes on the observed hybridization between a Herring Gull and a Lesser Black-backed Gull—the first such successful breeding documented in North America, aside from Greenland. The project has now passed from Dr. Ellis into new hands, and is co-led by me, from my base at Northern Essex Community College in Massachusetts, and Mary Everett, a recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell who has expertise in geographic information systems and mapping.

Figure 3. A worn band. Placed on a Herring Gull chick in 2005, it was removed and replaced after 11 years. The bird now wears band 13J.

Our current focus is on the Great Black-backed Gulls, in part because they are easier to trap and band, but mainly because far less is known about them as compared with their well-studied Herring Gull cousins. As we have for several years now, we place both a metal, federal band and a large, colorful, field readable band with an alphanumeric code on each bird—green for Herring Gulls and black for Great Black-backeds (Figure 3). Though these field readable bands are expensive at over five dollars each, the return is great in terms of sightings of our birds. People can often read the bands without binoculars, especially if the bird is one of our bolder, beach-going animals with little fear of humans.

Our project relies entirely on the contributions of sightings by members of the public. Indeed, two previous articles in Bird Observer have discussed sightings contributed to our project (Adrien 2016, Miller 2018). Sightings come from as far away as Indiana, Texas, and Florida, and although some gull spotters are dedicated larophiles who drive to known gull haunts on the lookout for birds, many of our sightings come from more casual observers who happen to notice a banded bird and, out of curiosity, search online for information.

Citizen scientists who contribute a sighting are often surprised to receive back a complete record on the bird: when and where it was banded, by whom, and where it has been seen since. This degree of detailed history is only possible through the efforts of long-time volunteer Bill Clark who has served the gull project in innumerable capacities over the years and now fields all the inquiries from the public about our birds. Some reports come from surprising quarters—this summer, our on-island banding team included Brad Natti, a lobsterman who sends us photos of our birds as they stand on the deck of his boat hoping for scraps. Like us, he has spent time observing gulls and has found them to be inquisitive, clever, and entertaining.

It seems a trend for humans to despise creatures that remind us too much of ourselves. Organisms that are common, that frequent urban or suburban environments, are generalists that will eat almost anything, and are adaptable to many circumstances, as humans are, get ignored, or worse, viewed as pests to be exterminated. Gulls are often placed in that category. It's a curious psychology at play. Bald eagles and bears, too, feed opportunistically at dumps and dumpsters, but somehow retain their ability to impress a feeling of having been in the presence of something wild. Maybe it's context: bald eagles also soar over pristine wilderness, and bears stalk the deep forests of mountains, but Norway rats and pigeons are, if not confined to, then strongly linked with, our built-up habitations. To which category do we assign gulls? Are they human-reliant opportunists, or do they caucus with seabirds, albatross, and petrels, and gannets falling from the sky like javelins into schools of fish? From what we have seen of them in our work, it's both.

Gulls deftly straddle two worlds. They can be at home on land or out at sea; eating french fries or eating mackerel caught miles out on the continental shelf; seen on the same seawall day after day at a Connecticut beach fighting over a bag of chips or never seen by human eyes at all, save for the couple months a year they come back to Appledore to breed. Our banded gull data illustrate this duality. Year after year certain birds are seen repeatedly, often in a very circumscribed location, across a season or even the entire year. Other birds, in contrast, are seen all or most years on a nest on Appledore, but never sighted anywhere off the island. Finally, there are birds we band and are never seen again anywhere. Particularly in juveniles, we presume most of these birds are dead since mortality rates in the first years of life are high.

Great Black-backed Gulls are sexually mature at four years old, so we begin looking for them to breed at that age at the earliest. If they don't come back by six or seven years after banding as a fledgling, odds are high that they are dead. Most gulls show natal philopatry—a drive to return to breed in the same colony where they hatched and fledged. Appledore gulls, therefore, are generally Appledore gulls generation upon generation. However, there are surprising exceptions.

During this summer of 2018, for example, we received a resighting report from Kiah Walker, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thacher Island in Rockport, Massachusetts—about 25 miles from Appledore. Kiah found two of our banded Appledore gulls nesting there. Each had an unbanded mate. One bird was nine years old and the other was seven years old. We do not know if either had been nesting on Thacher every year since reaching maturity. We have a handful of reports over the years of Appledore gulls nesting on other islands in the Isles of Shoals archipelago, so not every gull remains an Appledore gull forever.

Figure 4. Banded bird 0J2 with GPS logger. Photograph by Kate Shlepr.

What drives some birds to select other colonies is unknown, but it seems unlikely that overcrowding or lack of territory on Appledore would be the cause. Gull populations in the Gulf of Maine are believed to have reached their peak sometime between the 1970s and the mid-1990s. In the state of Maine, both the overall number of breeding birds, and the number of islands that play host to gull colonies have been on the decline. Between 1977 and 2013, there was a 30% decline in the number of Great Black-backed Gull nests (Mittelhauser et al. 2016). In addition, Appledore specifically suffered a precipitous drop in the gull census in 2004 when raccoons were introduced onto the island from the mainland and consumed large numbers of eggs (Ellis et al. 2007).

Though gull numbers on the island now are either stable or slowly declining, they never rebounded from the severe predation and nearly colony-wide breeding failure of 2004. As a result, the number of birds nesting on Appledore remains well below the known capacity of the island, at least in terms of nesting sites and territories. Why the gulls have not rebounded over the nearly fifteen years since 2004 raises questions about gull population trends in the region and beyond. Much of the research focus has been on what gulls eat and how food availability may have shifted over the decades.

Gulls associate with human habitations and, as inventive foragers, often make use of human-derived food sources. Just how reliant the various species are on anthropogenic food is not fully known and may be different not just between species of gull, but between individual gulls within each species. Data from southeastern Canada correlated declines in numbers of both Herring and Great Black-backed gulls with a moratorium on groundfish fishing put in place in 1992 (Wilhelm et al. 2016). The researchers posit that the resultant dearth of discarded fish and bait thrown overboard by fishing vessels left large numbers of gulls without their accustomed food source. While this correlation does not definitively demonstrate that the moratorium caused the drop in gull numbers, we have found that individual gulls are creatures of habit, often specializing in a certain type of food, or frequenting the same stretch of beach every day month after month. Gulls that had come to rely on fishery wastes may have struggled to adapt to their sudden absence and could have faced the additional challenge of having to compete for alternate food sources, which they might have been inexpert at obtaining.

To help answer these types of questions, we placed solar powered GPS loggers on five Great Black-backed Gulls nesting on Appledore Island in the summer of 2018. All five birds had been banded in a previous year, but most of them had never been observed anywhere but the island during breeding season. We have been curious about this phenomenon—why some banded birds are seen over and over again, and others never seen at all off the colony. The loggers are extremely lightweight and are mounted to the gull's lower back using a ribbon harness around the legs (Figure 4). The logger records the bird's position every fifteen minutes, and whenever the bird returns to the island, all the data are downloaded to a base station there. We now have almost two months of data on these five birds, and, as with most endeavors in science, what we have seen has raised as many questions as it answers. One of the birds flies straight to a landfill in Rochester, New Hampshire when it leaves the island to forage. Another frequents the mud flats near Rye, New Hampshire. Several others are spending most of their time at sea, ranging from north of Portland, Maine out to sixty miles east of the island (Figs. 5 and 6).

Figure 5. Band 4ET travel log. Bird's code is shown as (25) and locations are numbered sequentially. Photograph by Sarah Courchesne.

The loggers alone can't tell us exactly what the birds are doing, only where they are, and a bird out at sea might be fishing for itself or might be following fishing vessels foraging on scraps and discarded fish. We hope to obtain satellite data on ship traffic in the region and see how it aligns, or doesn't, with the paths taken by the birds. We do receive resight reports from individuals on board ships, lobstermen or fisheries observers working for NOAA, so we know at least some of our banded birds spend time riding on boats.

Whether all of our logger birds out at sea are eating fishery discards is not yet clear. It is a surprisingly difficult problem to solve. Many of the conventional ways of determining what food source an animal is utilizing cannot resolve the critical differences at issue. Techniques like stable isotopes or DNA barcoding can tell you whether a bird has been eating fish, or even what species of fish, but it can't tell you if the bird caught the fish itself or received it as a free handout off a boat. Making that determination is important for understanding population changes and making management decisions about gulls. A gull that fishes for a living will face different challenges than one reliant on the human fishing industry.

Figure 6. Band 0J2 travel log. Dot denotes Appledore Island. Each pushpin represents a position. The bird's logger code is shown as (29), and its locations are numbered sequentially as the bird traveled, i.e. 235(29), then moved to 236(29). Photograph by Sarah Courchesne.

For a long time, biology has treated individual organisms as representatives of their types and drawn conclusions at the population level. Gather up a large enough sample size, the idea was, and you could say everything about what that organism is like. Variation is the fundamental underpinning of natural selection, but that variation has often been subsumed by attention to the general behavior, the "average" bird, or the tendencies of the entire colony. What our study seeks to do is to tease apart that average and to know the birds as individuals. What is internally consistent in a particular gull? Is she an early nester every year or does the timing vary depending on conditions? Is he a crab specialist or a more generalist forager? Do all the gulls provide extensive post-fledging care to their young or are some birds more invested parents than their neighbors? Do these things make a difference, in the long run, in who survives and who doesn't? Who leaves a legacy of successful offspring and who is wiped off the genetic map?

For much of this work, we rely on observers who see our banded birds and send reports to us. The information we gather on adults continuing to feed their young even after leaving the breeding colony comes to us only because birders and casual gull watchers write in to tell us what they saw. A note that "M99 and Z09 were acting chummy," or that 2E2 and 5T9 were seen "sharing a skate meal" tells us who is caring for whom and when mates begin associating with each other before arrival on the colony.

The field season on Appledore is an intense flurry of activity. We capture and band birds, document their breeding success or failure, and identify birds that are visiting or surveying possible territories for future years. The rest of the year, when the gulls have left the island, we wait for these messages in bottles, our banded birds, to be seen and recorded on a beach, or at a wastewater treatment plant, or far out at sea on a ship's rail. Everyone who reports one of our birds is a collaborator in this research. To those who have already helped us, thank you. To those who have not yet, we offer an invitation to join us in studying these complicated, entertaining, sometimes frustrating, but always fascinating animals.

References

Adrien, D. 2016. A Close Look at Banded Gulls. Bird Observer 44 (5): 316–323.
Ellis, J. C., M. J. Shulman, H. Jessop, R. Suomala, S. R. Morris, V. Seng, M. Wagner and K. Mach. 2007. Impact of Raccoons on Breeding Success in Large Colonies of Great Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls. Waterbirds 30 (3): 375–383.
Miller, J. B. 2018. 2E2: A Successful Gull. Bird Observer 46 (1): 40–41.
Mittelhauser, G. H., R. B. Allen, J. Chalfant, R. P. Schauffler, and L. J. Welch. 2016. Trends in the Nesting Populations of Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus) and Great Black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus) in Maine, USA, 1977–2013. Waterbirds 39 (sp1): 57-67.
Wilhelm, S. I., J. F. Rail, P. M. Regular, C. Gjerdrum, and G. J. Robertson. 2016. Large-Scale Changes in Abundance of Breeding Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus) and Great Black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus) Relative to Reduced Fishing Activities in Southeastern Canada. Waterbirds 39 (spq): 136-142.

Sarah Courchesne grew up in Massachusetts, lives in New Hampshire, and has been a bird enthusiast since childhood. She trained as a veterinarian at Tufts and is currently an Associate Professor of Natural Sciences at Northern Essex Community College in Massachusetts.

To learn more about the Gulls of Appledore project, or to report a banded bird sighting, visit our website at gullsofappledore.wordpress.com

Seth Kellogg: A Massachusetts Birding Icon Steps Down

Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Seth's long-time interest in bird record-keeping of migrating raptors, as well as birds in general in western Massachusetts, eventually led him to take an early role on the roster of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee, where his even-handed approach to record-keeping made valuable contributions to that group's formative years. When Bird Observer first began publishing western Massachusetts bird records in 1999, Seth Kellogg's name soon graced the magazine's masthead as an associate staff member responsible for systematically collating and supplying western Massachusetts bird records for the journal's bi-monthly bird record archives. His knowledge and extensive experience with bird populations in central and western Massachusetts also made him a valuable member of the Important Bird Area (IBA) Program's Technical Committee during that program's seminal years in 2000–2002.

Sad to say, Seth Kellogg is stepping down from his illustrious and valued service to Bird Observer, but all of us on the staff want to wish him well, acknowledge his past efforts, and thank him for his valued service not just to Bird Observer but to the Massachusetts birding community as a whole. Nicely done, Seth!

Wayne R. Petersen