Ring-billed GullMention the term "snowbird" and what comes to mind? If you are a birder you are hoping for an influx of birds from Canada to our area. However if you are of a certain age you think of leaving the cold for warmer climes. My story involves both of these migrants.
In late December we headed south to Titusville, Florida which is on the east coast right across from the Kennedy Space Center. Just minutes away is the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge offers a wide variety of winter migrants as well as endemics. A tour through the Black Point Drive is always filled with great flocks of waders, coots, ducks and other species that can be observed fairly close up.
Playalinda Beach is a short ride from this drive and offers a chance of seeing Northern Gannets as well as shorebirds such as Ruddy Turnstones and the ever cute Sanderlings. As I made my way down this beautiful beach I came upon a small group of Royal Terns and Laughing and Ring-billed gulls.
Close inspection of the group revealed that one of the Ring-billed Gulls was banded, both with the standard aluminum band plus a blue tag on the other leg. I quickly got out my camera and took some photos of the gull. Upon returning to our campground I reviewed the photos and found that the band had the alpha-numeric code of 3AF. Thanks to technology I went online and googled "ring-billed gulls with bands." The site came up immediately and I filled out the form with all the details of where and when as well as the identification tag. The next morning my email had been answered. Professor Jean-Francois Giroux, a professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, is part of a study of these gulls and how they disperse.
My bird, I was told, is a male, banded on May 17, 2012 on Ile Delauriers, Varennes, Quebec. Subsequently it has traveled from there to Playalinda Beach and has been seen most winters. Come late March this snowbird makes his way back to Canada.
A couple of years ago I had seen a Ring-billed Gull on the very same stretch of beach with the same tag! The odds of seeing a tagged bird more than once is rather remote, but here was my bird loafing in the sunshine once again!
Finding birds with this type of banding and reporting the information to the proper study groups gives the researchers valuable data. So be on the lookout for any tagged birds, get a photo or write down the tag information. This is just another venue for the citizen scientist to add to the knowledge of migratory birds.