The Ring-billed Gull Comes to Kawaihae

    Last Thursday our friend Hai, sent me a text message.  He had discovered a gull in Kawaihae and was hoping I could help to identify it.  Why I didn't head north the following morning is a puzzle to me even now.  Certainly I was involved in a home improvement project, but this was  a seagull in Hawaii, for crying out loud! 

    Hai"s first picture was of an immature gull sitting:  light gray mantle, speckled breast, pinkish feet and and a black tip on a light yellow bill.   I knew that immature gulls were difficult to identify.  Most species change plumage annually for their first two or three winters.   Because my brother back on Camano Island poses the occasional bird identification puzzler, I have my parent's copy of Birds of

Singer helped identify this Camano Island owl.

North America, illustrated by the immortal Arthur Singer, in the bookshelf, in our Hawaii Room. Certainly Hai's bird looked like a second year Ring-billed Gull, but we needed to see the tail to firm up the identification.  

      Reasoning that gulls, like jet aeroplanes, could fly in from mainland North America or Japan, I retrieved a copy of Birds of Japan from the bookshelf in the ohana.  The first thing I noticed was that the illustrator, Shinji Takano, was no Arthur Singer.  As it turns out, juvenile Mew Gulls, which are similar to ring bills, but have a more gracile bill and a darker breast, are found in both America and Japan.  The only other larger gull that might fit the bill, as it were, is the Black-tailed Gull, which even in it first plumage has, you guessed it, a black tail. 

    By Friday we were getting a handle on the home improvement project, and Hai was out taking movies.  His clip of the gull flying showed a black band with a terminal white fringe on the tail.  The following link gives you several of Hai's excellent photos, and a video of the gull taking wing from the LST landing ramp, and flying over the harbor.  After watching this, there could be no doubt that he had found a ring-billed gull.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LGXyuTwdbYYJds9D7

    Sandra and I made it to Kawaihae early Monday morning.  As we drove by the harbor, she spotted the gull sitting on a rock fifteen yards off the beach.  We parked and walked down.  We kicked off our

The Ring-billed Gull holds court at Kawaihae Harbor  Nov. 2020

sandals and waded into the pleasantly cool harbor water.  The gull allowed us to approach and we watched him for ten minutes at close range.  Finally he grew tired of us and flew off, displaying that banded tail.  Identification confirmed, we motored up to the little park where we met Peter and our non-snorkeling friends Rick and Joy.

  That I had never seen a gull in Hawaii is perhaps best explained by my lack of connection to the bird watching community.  Birding on Hawaii is different.  As it is almost impossible to see a new bird, once you have done the work to see what is here, the birding community is not as prevalent as elsewhere.  Also, during much of the year, it's awfully hot for bird watching, especially at sea level.

   After returning home, I called my one contact that might know about unusual birds on our enchanted isle.  Patrick Hart is a professor at UH HIlo in the department of biology.  That the University of Hawaii (Hilo or Manoa) does not have a Department of Zoology and not a single ornithologist is somewhat surprising.  Pat is conversant in all terrestrial animals.  I met him through my butterfly project and he let it slip that he was also, perhaps even more so, interested in birds.  

   No good deed goes unpunished and so Pat was on the spot.  He immediately debunked my idea that

Patrick Hart out watching butterflies and birds.

gulls are extremely rare in Hawaii. A few gulls come every winter and are seen and well documented.    In fact, during the residency of the ring bill at Kawaihae, a second ring bill and a Glaucous-winged gull were seen at the sewage treatment plant in Kailua.  Pat directed me to a site called e-birds Hawaii, which is part of a larger site run by Cornell Laboratories.  One needs to sign up, after which they have access to sightings posted by other members. Sure enough, the birds at the sewage treatment plant were right there on the screen.  

   Like birdwatchers around the world,  I am well acquainted with sewage treatment plants.  Many years ago my dog, Freckles, scrambled under the fence at the plant near Tillamook, taking a plunge in the noxious brew.  On another day I shepherded Mrs Ochoa's den of Cub scouts, birding the ponds near Dallas, Oregon.   And yet, the Kealakehe Sewage treatment plant has escaped me.  How can this be?

   As eBirds Hawaii shows us, there are plenty of transient visitations by gulls.  Pat pointed out that the gulls tend not to stay long and apparently no one knows where they go.  Doesn't it seem odd that no ornithological grad student has slapped a transmitter on a couple of these vagrants and followed them out to sea? In any event, and despite clear evidence that members of the same species have landed on Hawaii Island at the same time, the archipelago has no breeding colonies of gulls. 

    Self proclaimed experts have written articles that speculate, in the manner of a sophomore ornithology student, about the reason for this.  There is a common misconception that only tube nose birds, albatross and their allies, can excrete a large salt load.  Since 1958 ornithologists have known that many families of birds, including shorebirds and ducks possess salt excreting glands and can, if necessary, live off seawater.  Up till researching this blog,  I suffered under that delusion and this was the reason I favored.  

    Another theory states that gulls are unable to find proper nutrition in Hawaiian waters.  If you look on the rock upon which we found the Kawaihae ring bill, I believe we can state without question that he was well fed.  Anyone who has pitched french fries to a hovering gull knows that they will eat almost anything.  With all the tourists in Hawaii, there is no excuse for a gull to go hungry.

    Can it be that there are no suitable places for gulls to nest?  Petrels and albatross, which in many respects resemble gulls, nest in Hawaii.  A few shorebirds, like the wandering tattler, nest in Hawaii, as do a few ducks. I think that there is something else, not yet defined, that causes the gulls to move on.  Our friend Hai is an extraordinary man who brings a holistic peace to Kawaihae Harbor.  Perhaps the ring-billed gull will sense this, choose to stay and tell his friends.  Until then, I guess we will have to make the occasional trip to the Kealakehe Sewage Treatment plant.  

jeff

Thanks to Marine biologist Susan Scott who wrote an excellent article on gulls for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The bird is a Barred Owl...at least as far as I'm concerned.