Behind Door #3

The invitation to visit Buffalo for Little Gull was enticing. While not common by any means, it is regular near Niagara Falls in winter. In North America, a small population breeds in Hudson Bay, and scatters far and wide for winter. I expected to encounter it along the coast of Massachusetts in March, or perhaps a dispersing juvenile at a reservoir in eastern Colorado in August or September. The year had flown by and no Little Gull had crossed my path. Less than a month to go in my quest for 900 species in the USA and it’s Territories, I would have to make some time in my busy birding schedule to go track one down. 

Using my iPhone, I searched for recent sightings of Little Gull in my BirdsEye App. Besides Buffalo, Cleveland had several sightings. Most others were in the Canada side of the Great Lakes. So I opened my Frontier Airlines App to see if there were free flights to and from Cleveland and Buffalo. Cleveland was more accommodating. So I messaged Chuck Slusarczyk, a fellow “larophile” (lover of gulls) who resides in Cleveland. We both frequently contribute to the North American Gulls Facebook group.  He agreed to meet me at Waterfront Park on the south shore of Lake Erie. 

So I passed on boarding my Denver flight in Orlando on Monday morning December 4, and boarded the direct flight to Cleveland instead. The ticket cost just $15 using the Go Wild Pass. I arrived mid morning, rented a car (for $75), beelined for Waterfront Park stopping just for a ready-made pepperoni pizza at Little Caesar’s. 

I found a sizable flock of small tern-like Bonaparte’s Gull at the marina and immediately spotted a darker bird which turned out to be a diminutive juvenile Franklin’s Gull, which is rare in Ohio. 

When Chuck arrived, we searched another part of the park with no luck. After splitting up to widen the search, Chuck called with good news. He had located the juvenile Little Gull among the original flock of Bonaparte’s Gull. A chain-link fence hindered our view so we both climbed on top of a four foot high metal box to clear the fence for the auto focus feature on our cameras to work correctly. 

I took as many photos as my bare, frozen fingers would permit. I had left my gloves in Boston by accident. Several birders had assembled to appreciate the tiny Little Gull (Biggest Year-bird number 829) which was putting on a great show flying back and forth just over the fence as if trying to impress its human audience. At 11 inches in length, this petite gull is the smallest in the world, smaller than a pigeon. It’s plumage features impressed us —whitish wings with a bold black “M” tattooed across them, a thick black band across the tip of the tail, and a pinkish wash to the breast and head. 

If you don’t appreciate why this bird impressed us, you may not be a larophile like me. Not everybody is. In fact, some birders actually hate gulls! If you think you are a larophile, you are among friends here. Feel free to express your love of gulls in the comments. I hung out at this park a while appreciating the enormous flocks of Ring-billed Gull.  Chuck explained that larger gulls arrive to this area in the early spring. I wondered where they were earlier in the winter. 

I was surprised to find another rarity -- a Harlequin Duck was feeding beneath the pier. 

To get home to Denver, I had to connect through Las Vegas and finally arrived at 4 am. My friend Dave Wade met me at the airport and on the way back to Fort Collins we detoured through the Rocky Mountain villages of Silverthorne and Estes Park in search of rosy finches. We found a handful of Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch. The weather was too nice, and the Black Rosy-Finch continued to evade me. I slogged through my front door around 2 in the afternoon. I hit the sack. The next adventure starts in 16 hours, just enough time to regain strength after several intense days of birding.

 

The two flights on Frontier, from Cleveland to Denver, had been discounted. I paid just $25. As with the last two forays, to Massachusetts and Puerto Rico, I was able to add a single new species to the Biggest Year total, but this time at a fraction of the cost.  My next trip will be to the South Pacific (Hawaii, American Samoa, and Guam) with much loftier expectations.