Florida Journal

The Appledore Gull

Chuck Tague

We started the day with a simple goal: to fill a gap in Kate St. John’s life list. She had never seen a Sandwich Tern, although she’s visited Joan and I in Florida every February since 2006.

We regarded Kate’s miss as a serious oversight on our part. Sandwich Terns are not hard to find on Central Florida’s beaches in winter. We arrived at Lighthouse Point Park at Ponce Inlet shortly after 7:30 a.m. It was gusty, the tide was high and the parking lot was nearly empty. I crossed the boardwalk through the dunes and scanned the beach from the jetty. The north wind drifted the dry sand so much the upper beach resembled the Sahara Desert. The lower beach was scoured clean, except for a reddish dome about a quarter mile to the north. I suspected it was a sea turtle but it was too far away to be sure. The three of us walked up the beach, past a group of loafing gulls, terns and skimmers. We barely noticed the three Sandwich Terns in the group.

It was indeed a turtle. A dead Loggerhead Sea Turtle had washed ashore. The animal was over three feet long and crusted with barnacles. The flesh from its head and legs were mostly eaten away. We chose to observe the turtle from up wind.

Since there were no other people on the beach, Joan walked back to the park office. Kate and I stayed with the turtle. I noticed a second group of beach birds not far up the beach and pointed to an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull. This was another life bird for Kate.

As a nature journalist, I would normally explore the meeting of the three very different travelers on a beach in Florida; travelers from different beginnings and with very different lifestyles. Kate and I, native Pittsburghers, were refugees from the Allegheny Plateau’s long, dismal winter. Loggerhead Turtles are long-lived animals that spend their lives traveling the ocean. They do not reach sexual maturity until they are thirty-five years of age. The one on the beach had spent decades roaming the Atlantic. It may have traveled north to Newfoundland or south to Argentina. Possibly it wandered the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a good chance it started its journey as a hatchling on a beach not far from where its body washed ashore.

The Lesser Black-backed Gull probably was born in Greenland or Iceland. This species is a common breeder on Europe’s north coast. Some winter in eastern North America. A large aggregation gathers in southeastern Pennsylvania each winter. Although they are regular winter residents, there has been only one documented nesting by a Lesser Black-backed Gull in eastern North America. In 2007, a male Lesser Black-backed Gull mated with a female Herring Gull on Appledore Island, off the coast of New Hampshire. One chick successfully fledged.

Here’s where our meeting takes an interesting twist. This was not just any Lesser Black-back. He was the one. On his left leg was a green band with white letters, “F05”. The gull at Ponce Inlet was the famous “Appledore” gull.

We were not the first to document the Appledore gull in Florida this year. On January 21, Michael Brothers, the Director of the Marine Science Center, reported the bird from Daytona Beach Shores, about six miles to the north of our sighting. Michael tells us the gull has been in the area since the first sighting.

A male Lesser Black-backed Gull mated with a female Herring Gull at Appledore again in 2008. This was presumably the same pair. The adult gulls were banded, as were their two fledglings. Julie Ellis, the bander at Appledore Island is curious when F05 will make the long journey north. She tells us no one will be at Appledore until May, but she will keep us informed.

On February 19, Kate, Joan and I had another marked gull sighting. We spotted a Ring-billed Gull loafing in a parking lot near the entrance of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The Ring-bill had a yellow plastic flag on its left wing and an aluminum USF&W band. I could make out two numbers on the aluminum band, “95”. I recognized the flag. The bird was marked to study gull movement in Chicago. I photographed a Ring-bill with a similar orange flag in December.

I reported the gull and received this reply from Thomas W. Seamans, Wildlife Biologist, USDA/Wildlife Services/National Wildlife Research Center-Ohio Field Station:

Chuck,

Thank you for your report and the photos. Based on your observation of the band, I think that the bird you saw was a female tagged on 10 May 2007 at the Lake Calumet colony on the southeast side of Chicago. I am guessing that the band number was 734-24995 as that was the only yellow bird that had a 95 in the tag number.