The Ballad of U10: How One Mischievous Bird Taught Me to Love Gulls Even More

One mid-September afternoon on a seaside in northern Massachusetts, I witnessed against the law.

I used to be tempted to dip my toes within the still-warm sea, however I’m a birder, so I obtained distracted taking pictures of gulls. One particular person caught my eye: It had a steel band round one ankle and a plastic band across the different, put there by researchers to assist research the species. Discovering a banded chicken is a fortunate break. I knew that if I might make out the numbers stamped on the bands, I might contribute to science by reporting them to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hen Banding Lab. Giddy, I zoomed in on the gull’s legs and began snapping.

My pictures had been timestamped with the precise second of the misdeed.

On September 17, 2022, at 1:26 pm, the American Herring Gull with a leg band marked U10 yanked open a tote bag emblazoned with the phrase BEACH, pulled out a bag of goldfish crackers, and stabbed the package deal with its beak, scattering the salty snacks all around the sand. The bag’s house owners yelled and ran over. Embarrassed, I lowered my digicam and slunk away.

To many individuals, gulls are pests. They’re seaside thieves and statue defilers, they usually scream like they’re on a curler coaster they’ll by no means get off. However typically, as with people, one of the simplest ways to grasp the entire is to decide on a person from the screeching hordes and get to know them. So, I talked to some individuals who know the gull U10 nicely. The extra I did, the extra I found the complexity, genius, and fragility of those oft-maligned seabirds. I additionally discovered that I’d picked the suitable topic: Some individuals assume that U10 is the perfect gull on the planet.

Gull Dinner

Each spring and summer season, elements of a picturesque island known as Appledore, situated seven miles off the southern Maine coast, change into a shrieking mass of gulls. These embrace Nice Black-backed Gulls and American Herring Gulls, the latter of which had been not too long ago break up right into a separate species from their European cousins. Researchers from the Gulls of Appledore project have been learning them since 2004. Once they banded U10 in 2014, he had already achieved the crisp plumage of an grownup.  Since American Herring Gulls take 4 years to achieve that stage, U10 is 15 years previous at minimal. His type can attain 30 or older; it’s doable that he has been stealing snacks for many years.

When U10 isn’t on Appledore, he hangs out on a preferred seaside at Parker River Nationwide Wildlife Refuge—the one the place I witnessed his thievery. Through the years, tons of individuals have reported their sightings of U10. Most contain meals. Somebody noticed him consuming a clam the scale of his head. He begged for Cheez-Its from a four-year-old who dubbed him a “superb buddy.” All informed, researchers have collected over 140 observations of U10 feeding—greater than every other American Herring Gull from Appledore. He’s a boon to the science of gull diets, which is one purpose why Mary Everett, the Gulls of Appledore undertaking’s onetime coordinator, calls him her favourite.

To a gull hater, U10’s broad food plan could show an absence of style. However it suggests a degree of genius, too, since harvesting every kind of meals requires particular abilities. Some American Herring Gulls choose wild blueberries. Some do a humorous shuffling dance to coax earthworms to the floor. Some snatch flying ants out of the air or drop clams from a fantastic top to smash them open. Their cousins, the European Herring Gulls, hunt rabbits, use bread as bait to catch goldfish (not the cracker type), or commute 40 miles every day to eat scraps at a potato chip manufacturing unit.

Research on European Herring Gulls present that thieving birds watch individuals’s faces and strategy us quicker when we’re looking away. They’ve realized to respond to our cries as they’d to alarm calls from different gulls. They pay particular consideration to any food humans have handled—they appear to know we solely contact the good things. One study discovered that European Herring Gulls had been profitable in about half of their makes an attempt to pilfer from individuals, which was higher than their success charge at stealing from many chicken species.

However look: It’s probably not truthful to name a gull a thief. Like us, U10 is simply making an attempt to outlive the Anthropocene.

Gull Speak 

Journey to Appledore Island in the course of the nesting season and also you’ll see a softer facet of U10. Gulls are typically monogamous, and U10 is especially romantic; although many pairs separate once they’re not nesting, he and his long-term mate have been sighted hanging out within the off season.

Most American Herring Gulls nest in the identical patch of open floor yearly, the place they’re weak to climate and harassment from different gulls. U10 does issues a bit otherwise. Appledore is residence to the Shoals Marine Laboratory, a subject station run by Cornell College and the College of New Hampshire, and U10 builds a solitary residence in a hole house below one of many laboratory’s classroom buildings. This makes him a favourite among the many lecturers and college students.

Herring Gull dad and mom are fiercely devoted; some, together with U10, feed their youngsters for an prolonged interval after they’ve left the nest. For the subsequent 4 years, the younger gulls undergo what researcher Mary Everett calls their “backpacking-through-Europe” section. Some wander so far as Texas and Mexico. Remarkably, most of them come again to breed on Appledore.

Life on Appledore will be messy. Gulls jostle to guard their house. One time, researchers watched as U10 obtained a style of his personal drugs. A Nice Black-backed Gull known as 2E2—one other notorious thief—stole a meal from him. U10 responded by standing on a rock and screaming at 2E2 for 5 minutes.

That these prickly birds handle to nest collectively in colonies is a testomony to their communication abilities. Although gulls are well-known for his or her screams—in Belgium, contestants within the annual European Championship of Gullscreeching wow judges with their most life like squawks— American Herring Gulls do greater than yell. They’ve a fancy repertoire of calls and gestures whose meanings change relying on context. Their cousins the European Herring Gulls, whose communication patterns are higher studied, make a minimum of eight distinct calls, and presumably a dozen or extra, combining them with gestures akin to squatting, dealing with away, and furiously ripping up tufts of grass.

Gone Gull

As he struts as much as a tote bag on the seaside, U10 seems invulnerable. However he’s extra fragile than he appears. In spite of everything, his species was as soon as almost wiped overseas.

Within the late 1800s, women wished feathers on their hats and different equipment, and hunters slaughtered enormous numbers of birds to fulfill the development. Snowy Egrets, Nice Egrets, and different elegant species fell sufferer to the grim harvest. This isn’t information to most chicken fans—it’s how the modern bird conservation movement started—however few of us know that gulls had been killed, too. Generally ladies walked round with entire dead gulls wrapped around their necks.

American Herring Gulls survived as a result of caring individuals labored arduous to guard them. However at present U10’s type are as soon as once more in decline, as are his bigger neighbors the Nice Black-backed Gulls. No one is aware of precisely why, however local weather change, which is unleashing profound changes on our oceans, appears a probable issue. Gulls are additionally weak to overfishing, industrial chemical compounds, oil spills, destruction of nesting grounds, entanglement in fishing gear, and extra. Avian influenza is a hazard, too; in 2022, U10’s long-term mate died, seemingly of chicken flu. (He has since discovered love once more.)

In the meantime, the gulls themselves are doing their finest to adapt within the fast-changing Anthropocene. In Maine, College of New England ornithologist Noah Perlut research American Herring Gulls which have found out the right way to nest on prime of buildings. Rooftop-nesting gulls appear to provide as many surviving offspring because the Appledore birds, they usually’ve found out the right way to overcome distinctive challenges. Perlut as soon as watched as a brand new lodge was constructed subsequent to one of many buildings the place the gulls nested. The builders, anxious that gulls would begin nesting on their new construction, festooned the roof with plastic owls, however the gulls decapitated each one of many fake raptors and a few even included the heads into their nests.

After I take into consideration the challenges that U10 and his fellow gulls face every single day, and the best way he dives into them whereas full-throatedly screaming, I’m awed. So far as anybody is aware of, the perfect gull on the planet continues to be alive and snacking. By now he’s seemingly made the flight out to Appledore and returned to his particular nest below the classroom. He’ll produce one other spherical of chicks and dote on his infants and shout in any respect injustices. So will his youngsters and his youngsters’ youngsters, as long as we allow them to.