Chasing a Black-headed Needle In a Haystack (part 2)

This story continues from Part 1

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So you see, I had no choice but to leave my desk and travel on a very short bird chase to Niagara Falls from Rochester, NY. We’ll be back by 1 pm, he promised. We’ll just do a quick check of the river.

It sounded fishy. But when ignorance works in obsession’s favor, you keep mum.

The Black-headed Gull had been spotted from the Lewiston Landing docks on the Niagara River by other no-doubt mad but reliable birders.

Brad Carlson and I headed up through the rain and wind to the historic village of Lewiston. Besides its reputation for attracting out-of-range gulls, Lewiston was a critical staging area for major battles in the War of 1812, the final stop along the Underground Railroad, and the invention place of the “cocktail.” 

Lewiston was a new birding destination for me and I didn’t know what to expect, but I felt our chances were pretty good. Not only does Brad have mad birding skillz, but my lifer accumulation rate was still climbing. And even though Brad said he’d chased this species to this very spot dozens of times in his lifetime, and failed at every turn, I remained positive.

When I stepped out of the car, however, my optimism was shattered.

Before me were THOUSANDS of GULLS. Not one or two thousand, but 5,000 or more!

A symphony of gulls on Niagara River in Lewiston, NY

A dense cloud of gulls filled the entire visible airspace of the river channel, stretching from right to left, and continued around the river’s bend at Queenston. 

The gulls were not sitting squat like ducks, waiting to be identified. They were all FLYING chaotically…banking and twisting in mad swirls over the river. This is what gulls do.

Compounding the odds, all this gull action was happening on the OPPOSITE side of the river, which was A MERE 2,000 FEET WIDE.

There I was, squinting at a maniacal array of acrobatic flyers trying to scope out a SINGLE BLACK-HEADED GULL when all I could see what a vast whirlwind of white banking in the overcast distance.

It gets worse.

The VAST majority of these gulls were BONAPARTE’S GULLS (Bonies).

First, click here to see a Bonie in breeding plumage (sorry, I cannot embed this image to protect copyright).

Now, take a look at BLACK-HEADED GULL:

Black-headed Gull, Courtesy Portland Bird Observatory, England

And finally, take a look at the LITTLE GULL because someone threw in a dozen of these JUST TO MAKE THINGS INTERESTING:

Little Gull, Courtesy www.gybc.org.uk/year/photos2008.htm

Now, take a moment to look at all three birds on your screen.

I challenge you to pick out the single White Bird with Black Head in sea of WHITE BIRDS WITH BLACK HEADS!

My god, this was a level of birding insanity I had not yet reached…Was this an initiation into the ranks of extreme birders whose last bastion of birding is to belabor the intricacies of white, sea-faring birds?

At this point, I was sane enough to feel thwarted by the improbable odds.

Es imposible!

Ah. But a birder doesn’t know from impossible.

Give him a shred of evidence and a chance to lengthen his life list and he’ll do anything, go anywhere, endure the greatest extremes and make the most hopeless of stands to see that bird.

And so we stood.

This sea of Bonaparte's Gulls gives you some idea of what we faced. Our gulls were airbound, however, flying chaotically up and down river. Photo by Brad Carlson, same river, different day.

Continued tomorrow…