Looking for gulls in southern Illinois
Gulls are noisy, long-winged seabirds with webbed feet. Although some live almost exclusively on fish, most are omnivores, and their unhinging jaws allow them to swallow large prey items such as starfish, big fish, other birds and scavenged carrion.
They are all quite social, and nest in colonies in the northern states and Canada. They protect the colony by mobbing predators. In our area you can usually find Herring, Ring-billed, Franklin’s and Bonaparte’s Gulls in the fall and winter months. In fact, all of these have already been spotted this October at Crab Orchard Lake.
The identification of adult gulls is pretty straightforward; they all have distinguishing colors, bills or plumage patterns that make it easy to tell one species from another. But immature or juvenile gulls are another story altogether, and even experts argue about grayish juveniles that resemble each another.
One thing birders like to do is seek out special gulls, and here in southern Illinois you can often find rare Laughing and Lesser Black-backed Gulls during the course of the winter. In all, 15 varieties of gulls have been identified here. Three excellent locations to look for and view gulls are Rend Lake, Crab Orchard NWR and the Carbondale Reservoir. Here’s a quick primer on the three most common gulls to visit our area in these cooler months.
The Ring-billed Gull is the most common of this family to visit us, and may be seen during any month of the year. They breed in our northern states and Canada, and spend the winter here wherever there’s ample food. It is a medium-sized gull, at about 18 inches long with a 4-foot wingspan. It has yellow legs, a white body and gray wings. A black ring around the end of a yellow bill gives the gull its name. It’s just as happy scavenging in restaurant parking lots as it is fishing in lakes, and can be seen just about everywhere.
The Herring Gull is strictly a fall and winter visitor, breeding far north in Canada and Alaska. It’s quite a large bird, at just over two feet long, and with a 58-inch wingspan. If this guy wants to steal your French fries, you’ll probably want to give them up. It looks much like the Ring-billed Gull, but has pink legs, and instead of a black ring on the bill it has an orange dot. This bird prefers to feed on larger bodies of water, and at landfills and garbage dumps.
Bonaparte’s Gull is a small, graceful bird with a buoyant flight. It’s 13.5 inches long and has a 33-inch wingspan. It, too, has gray wings and white undersides, but it has a thin black bill, and black trim on it’s primary (flight) feathers. In summer the head is black; in winter the head is white with a black dot behind the eye. This bird prefers lakes and rivers, where it picks off food from the surface of the water. At times, in the winter, you can find large flocks feeding on Carbondale Reservoir or at Baldwin Lake, which never freezes.
Current regional sightings
Most of our winter birds have returned, including Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers in Marion and many other locations, Merlins at Burning Star Mine and Crab Orchard NWR, Golden-crowned Kinglets at Pyramid SRA and other spots, Fox and Swamp Sparrows in Pomona, American Tree Sparrow in Pinckneyville, and Winter Wrens at Oakwood Bottoms and other locations. Twenty-three Sandhill Cranes flying over Saline County on Oct. 15 was a fine sighting.
• Henry Detwiler spent an exciting 16 years as a bird guide and has penned bird-finding books for several Arizona, California and Illinois counties. You can reach him at henry_detwiler@yahoo.com.