laughing gull

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The Sea Elephant, the Laughing Gull, and a Tsunami

After work, on my way down to Santa Cruz, I spotted a male elephant seal resting on Waddell State Beach. On the previous Friday I had seen a juvenile bald eagle perched above the beach. Waddell Beach had been good to me.

This weekend, on Saturday morning, I returned to Waddell Beach to see if the elephant seal was still there and if so, I intended to sketch it. But I found so much more!

I pulled into the dirt parking lot at about 7:30 AM. And there was the male elephant seal on the beach looking like a massive piece of driftwood. The seal’s stern was pointing toward the tide and it bulbous snout, facing east. This is only the second elephant seal I have seen on Waddell State Beach.

I planned to search the gull flock that usually rests and bathes in Waddell Creek on the beach near the creek mouth. At the end of the beach I could see the flock of about 100 gulls. I was hoping to find a black-legged kittiwake, a gull that I have been wanted to add to my county list for a while. But before I got to the flock, there were a few gulls foraging around the elephant seal. Indeed, they seemed to be in orbit around the massive mammal.

The dark gulls where juvenile Heermann’s gulls but there was one daintier gull that was actively foraging in the surfline. This gull really stood out. And that’s always a good thing when you’re gulling. The first thing that called out to me was the shape, size, and color of the beak. Now where had I seen that beak before?

This gull was smaller than the nearby Heermann’s gulls. I checked off the fieldmarks: dark bill, darkish smudge behind the eye (clearly one of the hooded gulls), dark eye with a white broken ring, grey back, brownish wing coverts, white undertail coverts (seen when in flight), dark wing tips, and dark legs. This could be only one gull, a gull I had seen on the Texas coast; even taking a dip in a hotel’s swimming pool. This was a first winter laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla)! A rare gull on the west coast of California.

Three laughing gulls in the hotel swimming pool in Rockport, Texas. The gull in the center most resembles the gull I found at Waddell Beach. The two other hooded gulls are in adult breeding plumage.
A pinniped piece of driftwood. A battle-scarred male elephant seal, master of Waddell Beach.

After taking some photos of the very active laughing gull, I pulled out my Stillman and Birn Beta hardcover panoramic journal, picked a position, and started sketching the elephant seal. He was very accommodating by just doing his driftwood impression. I looked north towards the parking lot and I noticed that a park ranger’s truck had just pulled in.

My field sketch of the male elephant seal at Waddell Beach.
The first winter laughing gull of Waddell Beach. What a great find! A Santa Cruz County lifer!

The ranger got out of his truck and he began walking towards me. Here I was, about to get a lecture about being too close to the elephant seal, when I was keeping a 25 foot buffer from the pinniped. Or so I though. When the ranger came within hailing distance, (when masked this seems to be about eight feet), he told me there was a tsunami warning and the surge was predicted to hit the coast right about now. I looked at my watch and it was just after 8 AM. He recommended that I leave the beach, which I did. I asked him if there had been and earthquake and he told me that and underwater volcano had erupted!

The undersea volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, 40 miles from the island of Tonga in the South Pacific, had erupted. A tsunami warning had been issued along the entire west coast of the United States as well as across the Pacific in Japan. The only evidence of the tsunami I witnessed was a swell running up Waddell Creek which causing the mallards to take to the air. At the time I really thought nothing of it. Winter waves I though. (I later found out that the surge damaged boats in Santa Cruz Harbor).

When I made it back to the parking lot I encountered two local birders who where looking for the recently reported black scoters. It is always great to have fellow witnesses when you find a rare bird. I showed them where the gull was, just to the right of the elephant seal and further down the beach. They got on it and then put word out on Monterey Birds of it’s presence. The more witnesses the better! Birders in Santa Cruz County love to share.

Thank you Lois, for getting the word out. And thank you for the very uncommon cuckoo in Watsonville!

One of the birders was Lois, the finder of the common cuckoo in Watsonville in the fall of 2012. That was an extremely rare bird that brought birders from across the United States to see it. I was glad to partially repay the favor with this humble, wayward, hooded gull. We seemed to be almost even.

Well, almost.

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Gather of Gulls

Flying Rats. Parking Lot Bird. Beach Pigeons. A Health Hazard. A Nuissance.

There are many epithets given to the unpopular group of birds collectively known as “seagulls”. These birds are often overlooked, even by birders. 

Gulls are found in most coastal urban areas including parking lots, school yards or perched on the roof of fast food chains, often chasing other birds and sometimes even small children. While the rising human population harms many species of animals, gulls seem to prosper with our desrtruction and altering of the earth’s landscapes.

From a birder’s perspective, gulls all seem to look alike and can be devilishly difficult to identify. Some first year birds look like a Dickensian chimney sweep, covered from head to tail in dark-gray soot. Or you have adult birds that all seem to have the same proportion of white and grey. It’s easy to understand why many birders ignore them altogether. With gulls, the devil is truly in the details.

So it was that on a Sunday morning that Dickissel and I came to be on a bluff above Pilarcitos Creek to observe details.

From our perspective, the creek was directly below us and beyond the water was Venice Beach and further down slope was Half Moon Bay. Directly in front of us were gulls bathing and preening in Pilarcitos Creek while up on the beach there where other gulls that were preening or resting on the sands. In total, the mixed gull flock included about 150 individuals.

This flock  was truly mixed. It included common gulls at different plumages on their three to fourth year journey to adulthood. And none of them resembled each other, hence the importance of observing details (and a scope helps).

The first gulls that stood out were the five adult and one juvenile black-legged kittiwakes, enthusiastically bathing in the creek. 2017 has been a fantastic year for this normally scarce species on the coast. For whatever reason, this winter, these petite pelagic gulls were abundant on beaches and off shore rocks. The kittiwakes kept their distance from the larger gulls in the communal bath that is Pilarcitos Creek.

One juvenile kittiwake would vigorously preen and bath at the base of the main flock and slowly float downstream just below our perch where we could observe it’s bold “M” stretched across it’s wing span and it’s black rimmed tail. Dickcissel christened the young one our “Homie”.

Our “Homie”, the juvenile black-legged kittiwake,  flying upstream to preen in the waters of Pilarcitos Creek. 

Aside from the kittiwakes, the most common gull present were westerns, followed by California, mew, ring-billed, and two glaucous-winged gulls. But we were searching for a large white Artic gem. This would be the largest and whitest gull around, a gull that cohabitants with polar bears and its foragaging portfolio includes predation, this gull was the glaucous gull (Larus  hyerboreus).

A large white gull with a pied bill of black and bubblegum pink appeared amoung the gulls washing in the creek. This gull really stood out. It washed and preened for a good 15 minutes allowing close study thought the scope. After it’s bath, the glaucous flew up to the beach to continue to preen.

A digiscope photo taken by Dicksissel of the 1st winter glaucous gull, bathing in the creek. All other gulls are giving this menacing youngster a wide berth.

What I noticed about the glaucous is that all the western gulls surrounding on the beach, it gave it a wide berth as if they knew the glaucous was different. Bigger, more aggressive, and menacing. All the other gulls stayed outside of pecking distance.

Some beach walkers flushed the gull flock, they took to the air, circled around and eventually returned to the creek and beach. I scanned the flock and refound the glaucous. I then noticed a bird at the upper edge of the flock that stood out. It stood out for a few reasons: first is was standing apart from the flock, as if it didn’t belong, second it’s bill shape was very different from the others, and lastly it’s dark eyes was framed in a broken white circle. This was a rare west coaster, a laughing gull (Leucophaeus artricilla).

A birder on the bluff looking for that needle in the haystack.