Twelve of us pounded pavement 200 miles northeast to Conneaut in hopes of seeing a black-headed gull that had disported itself there daily for the preceding week. It was unaccustomedly bright and warm in the harbor, and only a long and ragged line of attentive birders on the pier persuaded us we’d finally reached the favored spot.
A couple of hundred Bonaparte’s gulls slept on a sandy shore a couple of hundred yards out, keeping a discreet distance from local-yokel ringbills and a few herring and great black-backed gulls. Closer scrutiny revealed a few little gulls among them–as many as six by one estimate–mostly adults, diminutive more mothlike gulls with wings white when folded, rounded and sooty underneath in flight. As the birds awoke one by one and moved about, seemingly willing to do little more than squint in the warm sun, we became intimately acquainted with the few bonies who’d acquired the dark hood of breeding plumage, looking for their European cousin.
It was a snoozy scene for a while there under a bright sky, the temperature already in the 60s as 10:00 AM came and went. Birders began swapping stories, never failing to notice when a few gulls drifted in to join the flock. Surrounding areas were scouted on foot or on wheels to make sure this was the only gull roost, and this morning it was. An hour of two of migration overhead–and Conneaut can be spectacular for this when conditions are right–diverted us with hundreds of turkey vultures, flocks of landbirds, and raptors like harriers, accipiters, redtails, and a peregrine; a flock of early bobolinks joined them as the hordes headed east on the wind. Gulls, smaller ones occasionally among them, flew in from the west in small groups and alit on the bar.
It clouded over and quickly grew blustery, and we put jackets back on, even gloves, and went back to continuous scanning, discovering a lesser black-backed gull among scatter larger species far off against the breakwall. None of the rarer large gulls that had been reported–Thayer’s, glaucous, Iceland-was found. Some of us people-watched: the yahoos doing donuts on the mudflats, the dog-walkers, the gull-feeders, the boats out for fishing. We talked about how lucky everyone else had been earlier in the week, with the gull a veritable taxi-bird. The hours passed. Linked by walkie-talkies, some went to restaurants for lunch while the rest of us kept vigil, sandwiches in hand. Wishful thinking was a popular pastime, and we browned the hoods and reddened the bills of the by-now familiar Bonaparte’s. The virtues of patience were universally extolled by the assembled multitude. The sun reappeared briefly, now past its zenith.
I happened to talk with the director of the Conneaut Port Authority, who stopped by wondering why dozens of lost souls were standing around for hours staring at the “seagulls.” He told me his organization was managing a several million-dollar project to dredge all the disorderly sandbars and shallows in the basin this summer, pumping the spoil a mile and a half east to Pennsylvania, which claimed to “own” the sand. When I told him it wouldn’t be much good for birds, he gave me a blank look. There goes another gull-and-shorebird spot.
Growing restive, I conducted polls among the assembled Avids as to what we should do. Birders from as far away as Cincinnati arrived, some hanging around for an hour before leaving, some staying with us. More war-stories were exchanged. The Avids were agreeable to a fault, as always, willing to stick it out, willing to move on. We had plans to visit Grand River WA during the afternoon, to be sure. For four, the little gull was a new bird, and happy enough an event even if it was all we’d find. We looked at the possibilities from all angles and at all magnifications, like a suspicious gemstone offered for purchase. Some though the bird had most often been found in the afternoons, but some had different experiences, and maybe that was because it took so long to reach this remote outpost. By 1:00 PM, we hadn’t seen anything new for an hour and a half. Every bird within sight had been ogled repeatedly. The gang of Amish boys, whose enthusiasm had enlivened the crowd since early morning, finally folded their tripods, said goodbye and good birding, and were driven toward home. The wind “freshened,” as they say, rising above 20 knots, rolling the necks of broken beer-bottles across the cement pier. I reluctantly filled the leadership vacuum, announcing we all had 15 minutes to find this bird, and we went back to our eyepieces, clinging to our scopes in the chilling gusts.
The gulls, no more numerous since lunch, became more active, rising and swirling at each provocation, their underwings–except for those of the two remaining little gulls–disappointingly white. The hour for departure having arrived, we decided to spend a little time in the west section of the harbor; there, out disconsolate band surveyed a distant aggregation of gulls, hoping against hope, but by 1:25 or so we’d gathered our equipment and collective dignity and left the basin.
At Grand River WA, some sixty miles southwest, we walked some interesting wetland areas, but the persisting wind kept bird activity down, as did a constant fusillade of shotgun fire and a procession of all-terrain vehicles. We added a few woodland and field species to a mostly aquatic bird-list, filed the wildlife area away as a good birding spot for other times, and hit the freeway, arriving home after dark.
The black-headed gull showed up at Conneaut at 1:40 PM, a few minutes after we’d left. Byron and Joan, having arrived three hours after the rest of us, bid us goodbye and stayed on, long enough to taste victory I imagine. They joined an afternoon shift of about a dozen birders, only one of whom had stayed since breakfast, who saw the bird that day. I don’t know how we might have done it differently. Perhaps we should have gone to the wildlife area first. We spent upwards of four hours on that pier, it was getting cold, we had additional plans, the retinue of birds seemed unchanging–all good reasons to pull up stakes and get on with it, but I can’t help thinking that if someone had just lost a contact lens, or run into a long-lost acquaintance, or even brought out a bag of snicker-doodles, we might have stayed long enough to have made it all more worthwhile.
Our list, for a day mostly spent gaping at Lake Erie, was a bit skimpy. Custom dictates that I expose it, so here it is, but none of us is in the mood to hear any giggling from the back of the room!
53 species as follows:
