Connecticut Common Gull 3-5-23

      Last month my wife and went to visit our daughter in Rhode Island.  That visit coincided with a Green-tailed Towhee visiting Sachuest Point Wildlife Refuge, a ten minute drive from our hotel.  Despite the several hours over the span of a few days I never found the bird.  I believe it was only seen once, very briefly, by someone else during my visit.  Amazingly, a second green-tailed towhee, a sharp-dressed vagrant from the west, was also visiting Fairfield, CT.  Since the location of that bird was barely three miles off of Interstate 95, we detoured there on our way home.  Like the Rhode Island bird, I missed it by a day.  Likewise, this latest visit also coincided with a rare bird sighting.  Earlier in the week, a Common Gull was photographed at a state park only about 10 miles from my daughter’s apartment.

I monitored the ABA rarity sightings during the week and the bird was not reported again.  However there was one visiting Fairfield County in Connecticut.  This location was only a mile off of I95 and my wife was cool about making the stop on our way to Rhode Island.  Also at that location was a male Barrow’s Goldeneye.  I had seen one once before, but that was peering through a stand of trees, looking down towards a half frozen creek; not great looks.  My hopes were high as both birds were reported earlier in the day.  Alas, I was snubbed again.  I checked every Ring-billed and Herring Gull in the park and I could not turn any of them into a common gull.  The only ducks in my vicinity were a couple of Buffleheads and Mallards.  While in Rhode Island, I saw that the birds were still being seen after my brief attempt (of course).  I also noticed that a second common gull was reported in Tolland County, CT, much closer to Rhode Island.  My wife, bless her, again agreed to taking the detour to find this other bird on our way home.

The most recent reports of the Tolland bird were that it was spotted on top of, or near, a Kohl’s department store in a shopping mall.  As we approached the mall entrance, we saw the Kohl’s and I saw several gulls on the roof.  This had to be it.  We parked and I did a quick scan of the roof line and saw nothing but some ringed-bills and a few herring gulls.  I checked the rest of the parking lot, but there were too many vehicles which was why the birds had moved to the roof.  After a few more minutes of searching, about a hundred gulls that had been out of view from the parking lot lifted off of the roof and scattered.  They slowly began returning to the Kohl’s roof.  By then another birder had showed up and we walked up the berm that was along the edge of the parking lot to get a better view of the roof.  It did not take long then for me to finally spot the bird standing on the edge of the roof directly above the O in Kohl’s.  It looked much like the dozens of ringed-bills on the roof, but this bird lacked the dark black band or the red-orange gonydeal spot near the tip of its bill that the others sported. 

Common gull (over the center of the "O") with other gulls atop department store roof in Tolland County, CT.  © S. Weiss

Common gull (right) next to Ring-billed gull (left).  © S. Weiss

Common gull, European subspecies, (Larus canus canus).  © S. Weiss

In 2021, the former Mew Gull was split into two different species:  Short-billed Gull and Common Gull.  Short-billed gull (Larus brachyrhyncus) is the North American species common to the Pacific coast.  Common gull (Larus canus) is a European and Asian species with three subspecies:  European, Kamchatka and Russian.  A Kamchatka (Larus canus kamtschatschensis) and a European (Larus canus canus) are both currently in Connecticut.  Russian common gull (Larus canus heinei) hasn't yet appeared in the U. S.

Common gull (European) on left and a ring-billed gull on right.  © S. Weiss

Both birds look similar.  Some of the standout differences are the common gull has a dark iris and a very faint black stripe near the tip of the bill.   The bill is shorter on the common gull.

This was a life bird for me and I wanted to confirm it before I left.  I sent a photo to my friend Jason and called him.  He is a member of the New Jersey Bird Records Committee and the best gull birder I know.  In fact, he found NJ’s only state record of common gull last year.  He agreed that this was the bird.  It is not an eye-popping, spectacular looking bird.  To me, this was more like a needle in a stack of needles find, something for which some birders don’t have the patience. This particular bird happens to be of the European subspecies.  The one in Fairfield County is the Kamchatka subspecies.  I would love to have gotten both birds for comparison and to share on this platform, but things do not always work out so nicely.  Birding is an adventure, and often a successful find comes on the heels of a few disappointments.

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Also during the weekend…

American Mink seen scurrying around Sachuest Point Wildlife Refuge.  © S. Weiss