There were hundreds of gulls down in and around the mouth of Indian River this afternoon. This is certainly an unremarkable occurance to anyone familiar with this area, but I did notice some strange calls coming from the flocks that I thought were worthy of mention. Unfortunately (for my curiousity) I was engaged in conversation with someone near the trees when I heard the strange calls out by the water (a fair distance away at that time).
The calls were not the typical gull calls I am used to hearing, but more of a hoarse, raspy call. I’m not sure how best to describe it. In the big mix of gulls from that distance it was almost impossible to link a gull with a call, but one of the times I heard the call I did notice a distinctly small gull in pursuit of another gull that was clearly quite a bit larger than the one in pursuit. The direction the call seemed to be coming from tracked with the flight path of the birds. At the time it was my impression that the smaller bird was making the calls. From that distance, all I saw was the relative sizes and no real detail on the smaller bird. I went down the beach a few minutes later to get a better look at the gulls, but did not notice any that were out of the ordinary (nor did I hear the call again).
When I got home, I listened to the Gulls on the CDs of the Birds of Alaska and the closest match was a Bonaparte’s Gull. It was not so close that I am confident that is what I heard (nor am I sure about the exhaustiveness of the different vocalizations on the CD for the other gulls). I guess with the relative size difference I saw, combined with my impression that the smaller gull was making the calls and the similarity of the calls to a Bonaparte’s Gull recording, I guess it seems reasonable to conclude that it may have been a Bonaparte’s Gull (maybe I should put more qualifiers in that statement… I wouldn’t want to be too hasty). That said, it seems like a black head would have stood out pretty well, even from a distance, and I did not notice one. (It seems like their winter plumage does not include a totally black head like the breeding plumage. I guess I do not know what months that change would occur.)