Oldest Ring-billed Gull on Record Discovered by Cleveland Birder
At 28, the gull is a year older than the previous title holder, further expanding our knowledge of the species' longevity.
This past winter, Chuck Slusarczyk Jr. braved the frigid wind of Cleveland’s Wendy Park neardaily to observe the thousands of gulls that congregate atthe mouth of the Cuyahoga River.But on one January day, among themix of several species, he noticed a Ring-billed Gull with ametal band around its leg. Hoping to learn more about the bird’s history,Slusarczyk returned over the next five days to re-find the gull and snap a clear picture of the band—but the bird always seemed to be facing the wrong way. Ultimately, Slusarczykmanaged to captureonly part of the band’s identificationnumber before growing ice cover pushedthe gulls to open water and beyond the reach of his camera lens.
Unsure whether the partial report would be useful,Slusarczyk sent an emailto the United States Geological Survey's Bird Banding Lab. Someone from thelab eventually got back to him and requestedhis photos to help with the ID. The labtracks which numbers each bird bander uses, and they allbegin with a three- or four-number prefix followed by a five-number suffix. Slusarczyk had photographed the fullsuffix, sostaff had agood lead. In addition to the number, lab biologists also useclueslike the band's construction andwhere it is located on the bird to determine origin.
After another round of photo verifications, on March 4, Slusarczyk finally got his answer—and it was a surprise. The USGS biologists had positively identifiedٳgull while also confirming that ܲhad spotted the oldestRing-billed Gull on record, at 28 years old, beating the previous record by a year.
Even with the missing digits, “it was a slam dunk to figure out which bird this actually was,” saysMatt Rogosky, an encounter biologist at the lab who helped solvethe gull’s identity.
As it turnedout, Slusarczyk’s gull was born in 1992 at Tommy Thompson Park, a spit of coastal habitat jutting out into Lake Ontario near downtown Toronto. At the time, this colony was undergoing a population explosion, and researchers led by Hans Blakpoel at the Canadian Wildlife Service hoped to understand why, as well as where juvenile birds dispersed to after leaving the nest.
Ring-billed Gulls are one of the most familiar gulls in North America due to their prevalence around dumps, parking lots, and beaches, where their bold, french fry-stealing antics have earned them a negativereputation. However, biologists know surprisinglylittle about the species’longevity, due in part to a lack of data. Slusarczyk’s find represents an important datapoint toward our understanding of these birds, while highlighting the value of bird banding for understanding species demographics more generally.
Discoveringsuchan old gull might sound shocking, but there simply aren’t enough long-term demography studies onRing-billed Gulls togauge how strange a record like this is, says Dave Moore, senior waterbird biologist at the Canadian Wildlife Service who holds Blakpoel’s role today. Many of these gull-banding studies last only a few years and havetargeted purposes, he explains, andreturning adults are typically younger than 10 years old. Further complicating things is thatmany older studies usedflimsier aluminum bands that fell off afterfour or five years,according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology's.
Resighting live birds away from the colony, especially those with such tiny bands, is also difficult. “These small metal bands are best read in the hand,” says Erin Giese, senior research specialist at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Cofrin Center for Biodiversity. “The fact that [Slusarczyk] was able to resight the band was tremendous on its own.”
Paying attention to small details comes naturally to Slusarczyk—not only is he a birder, but he’s also a guller, arguably birding’s most fastidious faction. Gulls can beespecially difficult toidentify; species sport a relatively uniform color palette of whites and grays, and individuals may go through a complex sequence of immature plumages before reaching maturity (three years old, in the case of Ring-billed Gulls).
But the hobby also brings its own specialpleasures: During the winter, rare or vagrant gull species may mix with large flocks, and only a trained eye can spot the outliers. Still, even the commonest gulls delight die-hard gullers. “They’re adaptable survivors, and sometimes they’re downright funny,” Slusarczyk says.
Apparently they can age gracefully, too. Slusarcyk says this Ring-billed didn’t look any older than the four- and five-year-old banded gulls he’s reported in the past.
As more people pick up birding, bird-banding biologists hope that arisein band resightings will follow, allowing for scientists to learn more about the movements and lifespanof gulls and other birds than ever before. There’s even a chance these resightings could help change the Ring-billed Gull’s reputation in the general public. “Knowing that something lives that long is really important,” Moore says. “I hope it changes people’s perspective.”
Without any other reports ofthisbird in the past 28 years, it’s impossible to know anythingabout its life—what it’sseen or where it’s gone—but banding studies overall show Ring-billed Gulls’ marked fidelities to their breeding colonies. And though the Toronto gulls spread across eastern North America during the winter, they also showa similar loyaltyto their wintering locations.
In fact, Slusarczyk took another look at his gull photographs after receiving his certificate from the banding laboratory, and he noticed that he’d photographed the same bird last year. He just didn’t know he could submit a partial band at the time. “It’s been here two winters in a row,” he says. “It was probably here every winter since 1992.”