For the Birds: Tufted Titmice and New Gull Book

Cheeky Titmouse

As the 2007 nesting season ends for most of our birds, I want to share a remarkable story of a Tufted Titmouse in Richmond, Maine reported to me by Alice Elliott. Alice and her husband Dan own a golden retriever named Fisher.

Tufted Titmice often incorporate hair into their nests, particularly the inner lining. Last April, Alice and Dan were amused to see a Tufted Titmouse land on Fisher while he was sleeping on the deck. It soon became clear that the titmouse was pulling hair from Fisher to use in nest construction. Fisher was amazingly tolerant as the titmouse removed large beakfuls of hair.

The titmice started a second brood later in the summer and came back to the patient Fisher for more hair.

You can see photographs of the titmouse and Fisher at Alice’s blog (http://henbogle.blogspot.com/). Go to the April 25 post to see a number of photographs of the titmouse removing Fisher’s hair. Go to the July 25 post to see a short video of this unlikely pair.

New gull book

Houghton Mifflin has recently published a new gull identification guide. Written by Steve Howell and Jon Dunn, the book is titled Gulls of the Americas. The book is in the Peterson Reference Guide series. At a size of seven by ten inches, the book will be used more in studying at home rather than serving as a field guide.

This book is a potent competitor to Gulls of North America, Europe and Asia published in 2003 by Klaus Olsen and Hans Larsson. Howell and Dunn’s book covers gulls in North and South America; South American gulls are not covered in Olsen and Larsson.

Gulls are challenging birds to identify in the field. Our smallest gulls require two years to acquire adult plumage and our largest gulls take four years. Within a population, significant variation in appearance and in the onset of molting creates a bewildering variety of gulls. Gulls often roost and forage in mixed flocks, adding to identification challenges. Geographic variation across the range of many species adds to the confusion. Finally, gulls hybridize to make matters even more complicated.

Careful study of Howell and Dunn’s book will reward any birder. They begin their book with an introduction to gull morphology and molting. Little information is provided on behavior, reproduction and foraging of gulls; the book is focused on identification.

The introduction is abundantly provided with high-quality photographs. Many of the photographs are labeled to show features like the gonydeal expansion, primary projection and tertial crescent that can be important features in identification.

The authors provide a lucid description of molts and plumages. Rather than writing of molts in terms of years, they consider molts in terms of cycles. A cycle begins when a gull begins a molt that includes replacement of all of its primary feathers. For adults, a cycle corresponds to a year. Adult gulls usually begin their flight feather molt in the late summer after breeding. For cycles of immature birds, molting usually takes several months less than the adult cycle. For these birds, years and cycles do not match so gull researches choose to identify plumages as second-cycle, third-cycle, etc.

As a way to reduce the identification possibilities of a gull, the authors divide the gulls into two groups, the Tern-like Gulls and the typical gulls. The Tern-like gulls are the smaller gulls with more buoyant flights. This group includes Bonaparte’s Gull, Little Gull and Black-legged Kittiwake. Herring Gull and Ring-billed Gull are Typical Gulls. They further subdivide each of these two major groups into smaller groups. Most of these sub-groups seem reasonable although I question why they put Bonaparte’s Gull and Black-headed Gull in the Masked Tern-like Gulls and put Little Gull in a separate category, Small Tern-like Gulls. Bonaparte’s Gull is scarcely larger than Little Gull and separating these two species in the field is a challenge.

Following the introduction is the largest section of the book, the Plates. The authors devote 250 pages to annotated photographs of the various species and hybrids of gulls. Each page has up to six photographs. The photographs show the variation within species and cycles for the 36 gull species.

The remainder of the book is devoted to textual Species Accounts. Each account begins with an Identification Summary followed by a section on Status and Distribution. Most of the account is devoted to Field Identification in which each cycle is thoroughly described. Flipping between the Species Account and the appropriate pictures in the Plates is an effective way to improve one’s gull identification skills.

[Column originally published on August 10, 2007]