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

One mid-September afternoon on a seashore 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 acquired distracted taking photographs 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 examine the species. Discovering a banded hen is a fortunate break. I knew that if I may make out the numbers stamped on the bands, I may contribute to science by reporting them to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Chicken Banding Lab. Giddy, I zoomed in on the gull’s legs and began snapping.

My photographs 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 homeowners yelled and ran over. Embarrassed, I lowered my digicam and slunk away.

To many individuals, gulls are pests. They’re seashore thieves and statue defilers, they usually scream like they’re on a curler coaster they will by no means get off. However generally, as with people, one of the simplest ways to know 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 proper topic: Some folks assume that U10 is one of the best gull on the planet.

Gull Dinner

Each spring and summer time, elements of a picturesque island known as Appledore, situated seven miles off the southern Maine coast, develop into a shrieking mass of gulls. These embody Nice Black-backed Gulls and American Herring Gulls, the latter of which had been just lately cut up right into a separate species from their European cousins. Researchers from the Gulls of Appledore project have been finding out 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  Since American Herring Gulls take 4 years to achieve that stage, U10 is 15 years outdated at minimal. His variety can attain 30 or older; it’s potential that he has been stealing snacks for many years.

When U10 isn’t on Appledore, he hangs out on a preferred seashore 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 “excellent good friend.” All advised, researchers have collected over 140 observations of U10 feeding—greater than another 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 eating regimen could reveal an absence of style. But it surely suggests a stage of genius, too, since harvesting every sort of meals requires particular expertise. 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 an amazing peak to smash them open. Their cousins, the European Herring Gulls, hunt rabbits, use bread as bait to catch goldfish (not the cracker variety), or commute 40 miles every day to eat scraps at a potato chip manufacturing facility.

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

However look: It’s not likely honest to name a gull a thief. Like us, U10 is simply attempting to outlive the Anthropocene.

Gull Speak 

Journey to Appledore Island in the course of the nesting season and also you’ll see a softer aspect of U10. Gulls are usually monogamous, and U10 is especially romantic; although many pairs separate after 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 susceptible to climate and harassment from different gulls. U10 does issues a bit in another way. Appledore is house to the Shoals Marine Laboratory, a discipline station run by Cornell College and the College of New Hampshire, and U10 builds a solitary house in a hole house beneath one of many laboratory’s classroom buildings. This makes him a favourite among the many academics and college students.

Herring Gull dad and mom are fiercely devoted; some, together with U10, feed their children 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” part. 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 acquired a style of his personal medication. 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 expertise. 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 lifelike 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 no less than eight distinct calls, and probably a dozen or extra, combining them with gestures comparable 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 seashore, U10 seems invulnerable. However he’s extra fragile than he appears. In spite of everything, his species was as soon as practically wiped in a foreign country.

Within the late 1800s, girls wished feathers on their hats and different equipment, and hunters slaughtered enormous numbers of birds to fulfill the pattern. Snowy Egrets, Nice Egrets, and different elegant species fell sufferer to the grim harvest. This isn’t information to most hen lovers—it’s how the modern bird conservation movement started—however few people 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 folks labored exhausting to guard them. However immediately U10’s variety 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 possible issue. Gulls are additionally susceptible to overfishing, industrial chemical compounds, oil spills, destruction of nesting grounds, entanglement in fishing tools, and extra. Avian influenza is a hazard, too; in 2022, U10’s long-term mate died, possible of hen 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 discovered find out how to nest on high of buildings. Rooftop-nesting gulls appear to provide as many surviving offspring because the Appledore birds, they usually’ve discovered find out how 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 each day, and the best way he dives into them whereas full-throatedly screaming, I’m awed. So far as anybody is aware of, one of the best gull on the planet continues to be alive and snacking. By now he’s possible made the flight out to Appledore and returned to his particular nest beneath the classroom. He’ll produce one other spherical of chicks and dote on his infants and shout in any respect injustices. So will his children and his children’ children, as long as we allow them to.