Caught on the wing; First sighting of rare seagull made in Gloucester

Gloucester may boast some attractive tourist destinations, but local birdwatchers are wondering which one might have brought a pair of rare seagulls that could have come from as far as Siberia to hang out around the harbor.

Two slaty-backed gulls have been spotted in Gloucester over the last two weeks, at Jodrey Fish Pier and Niles Pond.

It's an exciting development for the birdwatching community, and many birders have flocked to Cape Ann hoping for a glimpse of the visitors. It also has many scratching their heads as to how - or why - these birds made it to Massachusetts from so far away.

Renowned bird scientist and field guide author David Sibley first spotted the gulls at Jodrey Fish Pier on Dec. 23, making the first identification of the bird in state history. Gloucester nearly lost that distinction to the Cape Cod town of Eastham, where a slaty-backed gull was spotted on the very same day, just an hour later.

"This puts Gloucester on the map as far as birdwatching," said Susan Hedman, a Gloucester resident and birdwatcher.

To the untrained eye, slaty-backed gulls, so named for their slate gray wings, look much like any of the sea gulls that Gloucester beachgoers are used to shielding their snacks from on a hot summer's day.

The gull has a pure white head and belly with white trim on its gray wings. Other tell-tale signs that the gull a birdwatcher is seeing is slaty-backed include pink legs, yellow eyes and an orange spot on its yellow bill.

"You have to be looking for it to find it," said Sibley, who lives in Concord and was on Jodrey Fish Pier for the day. He had been awaiting the sighting for some time, knowing that reports of the breed in eastern North America have been climbing over the last decade.

Sibley had to wait half an hour to confirm that the gull he saw was a slaty-backed, as it slept on one of the flat roofs on Gloucester's waterfront. It wasn't until it took flight and Sibley could see the pattern on its wings, that he was certain. That was around noon.

Around 1 p.m., Wayne Petersen, director of Massachusetts Audubon Society's Important Bird Areas program, was participating in a Christmas bird count in Eastham when he and a colleague noticed a bird they were "suspicious of."

After 45 minutes of tracking it, the pair concluded it was, indeed, a slaty-backed gull. They too thought they had captured the state's first identification.

Petersen's cell phone was dead, which meant he was unable to reach his teammates on the opposite side of the marsh to properly record the bird. When his colleague began making calls, he happened upon a birdwatcher who had been surfing an online discussion board.

"She said, 'You're not going to believe this,'" Petersen recalled. "'Half an hour ago on (the Web site), none other than David Sibley posted his sighting of one or two slaty-backed gulls at Jodrey Fish Pier.'"

"It's just so improbable," Petersen continued. "So incredibly coincidental."

This was Sibley's first state record in Massachusetts, where he's lived since 2000, though he's made the first recording of other birds in different states. Even the most serious birders typically only achieve that honor once or twice in their lifetimes, according to Sibley. The feat is particularly difficult in Massachusetts, with its rich birdwatching history and more than 150 years of detailed records.

"There is sort of a friendly competition among birders to find rare birds," Sibley said. "There are definitely bragging rights to finding the first state record."

Neither casual birdwatchers nor experts could say whether the slaty-backed gulls' appearances in Gloucester and on Cape Cod were indicative of any larger trends in migration or climate. However, Petersen said that within the same week of the Massachusetts recordings, slaty-backed gulls were spotted in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Newfoundland.

"It's like there's been an invasion of slaty-backed gulls," Petersen said.

The gulls have popped up on the West Coast, in western Alaska and in widely scattered spots throughout the country, from Colorado to Missouri to Key West - far from their Asian and Siberian homes.

"You get the sense that there's definitely something going on with slaty-backed gulls," Petersen said.

As to what's going on with them, or how they made it here, he is not sure, but suspects they're simply coming overland from points west.

Because the birds spotted are so few in number - one or two in each spot - they're considered vagrant, a status not uncommon for young birds.

"They're either disoriented or simply wandering around, like young humans do before they settle down and do what they're supposed to be doing," Petersen said.

One of the birds spotted in Gloucester, however, was at least 4 years old - old enough to breed. When the birds are young, they most certainly will drift back, but Petersen said the presence of the older bird leaves the door open for the possibility the breed is truly migrating, not just making a stop.

The birds usually breed in Siberia, Sibley said, and there's no records of them showing up in North America during their summer breeding season. More than likely, both Sibley and Petersen agreed, the gulls would be gone come spring.

There is no evidence that the scattered sightings of the gulls, or any other misplaced breed of bird, is related to climate or environmental changes because there are many reasons why birds choose to expand or migrate to different areas, including food availability or population changes.

For now, birders' eyes are on the two gulls hanging about Gloucester.

Peabody birdwatcher Rick Heil said he made the trip to Niles Pond the day after Sibley's discovery, along with dozens of other birdwatchers hoping to spot one of them. It's not every day, after all, that a bird visits from halfway around the world.

"It's really exciting," said Hedman, the Gloucester birdwatcher. "It's a lot less expensive than a trip to Korea."

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