Kittiwake Sighting

More than once, I have written about Cobourg Harbour as a terrific spot for observing gulls in winter. Last Sunday, Feb. 13, this was the place to be for gulls. Of course, it was one week after Willow Beach Field Naturalists had an outing there particularly for gulls, without turning up anything special.

Several observers who visit the harbour daily throughout the winter said that they had never seen so many birds on the ice as on Sunday. Estimates were around 5,000 gulls. The numbers fluctuated somewhat throughout the day,

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the gulls would flush into the air in a swirling mass, only to circle around and land again on the floating ice. This behaviour is a great frustration to observers trying to pick through the flock for rarities, or simply to count numbers of each species.

There were a couple of treats. First, and easiest to find was a black-legged kittiwake. It had been seen mid-week, but turned up again on Sunday swimming just off the parking lot on the west side of the harbour. This individual was in first winter plumage, the most readily identifiable plumage of this kittiwake. It has a dark collar around the back of the neck and a dark mark on the side of the head behind the eye. In flight, dark marks on the leading edge of the wing form a distinctive "M" pattern. It is about the same size as a ring-billed gull.

Black-legged kittiwakes are common off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The eastern population nests on cliffs from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Greenland. It spends most of its life at sea. There are other records of this species in Northumberland County, most from Presqu'ile.

Then, as so often happens when a rarity turns up and with it, many pairs of keen knowledgeable eyes, another rare gull was spotted amongst the thousands. This one was much more difficult to find even with the aid of a spotting scope.

A mew gull is slightly smaller than a ring-billed gull with a plain yellow bill (no ring) and a dark eye. Spotting this bird amongst the thousands of ring-bills was an amazing feat. I saw the bird, but only because it was pointed out to me. When the ring-billed gulls around it decided to preen, stretch their wings and walk in front of it and the mew gull decided to squat down and go to sleep, it completely disappeared into the surrounding hoard.

Mew gulls should be on the west coast, so this bird was decidedly more rare a find than the kittiwake. There has been only one other record of this species for Northumberland, and that one, too, was in Cobourg Harbour.

In all, nine species of gull were seen in the harbour that day: ring-billed gull, herring gull, great black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, glaucous gull, Iceland gull, Thayer's gull and the two rarities, black-legged kittiwake and mew gull.

Although the kittiwake was seen again on Monday, the mew was not.

As I write this on Tuesday, reports are that Cobourg Harbour is completely frozen again and there are many fewer gulls than there were on Sunday.

These sightings of rarities are the reward of the observers who work their local patch on a regular basis