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Glaucous Gull : Glaucous Gull Qukisvak Of all the Alaskan gulls, this guy is the biggest. Measuring 27 inches from beak to tail, it has a wingspan of five feet. No wonder, all the Yupik names I've found include the ending "vak" (big) on them. As to the meaning of the name Qukisvak and its variants, Kukisvak, Kukusvak, and Narusvak, the closest I can come is "big loud-mouthed bird or gull." The scientific name of the gull is Larus hyperboreus, which means "extreme northern seabird." And the common name derives from the Greek, glaukos, for the color, blue gray. Like many of its cousins, Qukisvak is an omnivorous scavenger and predator, eating small fish, sea stars, carrion, sea-bird eggs and young, small mammals such as lemmings, insects and berries. They often pirate their food from other birds, especially eiders, by chasing them until they disgorge their own food. They take small seabirds, especially young fledging from their nests for the first time. Since these birds live in colonies, sometimes with other birds such as murres, you may have noticed them at the end of Cape Romanzof or on beaches or small islets on tundra lakes or large rivers such as the Yukon or Kuskokwim. To my mind, Glaucous gulls are not attractive birds. However, they do have redeeming characteristics, especially during their courtship period. To attract the female, the male tosses his head back, then stretches it as far as he can and calls to her sweetly. After the pair bond has been established; he feeds the female by choking up regurgitated food for her. This not only strengthens the relationship during the honeymoon, it also helps nourish the female after mating occurs and assures that her eggs will be healthy. Both parents build the nest, which is a shallow depression on top of a mound of grasses, moss, seaweed, and feathers located on a cliff ledge, flat rocky ground or outcrop, and sometimes on ice or snow! Three brown-blotched olive to buff colored eggs are laid, and both parents help incubate them for about a month. The downy hatchlings are born with their eyes open, and just a few days after pecking their way out of their calcium enclosures they are ready to walk out of the nest. Even so, after they leave the nest the young hang around the immediate area while both parents help feed them regurgitated meals of the half-digested flesh of baby murres or lemmings or maybe the scavenged remains of a smelly walrus carcass washed up on a Bering Sea beach somewhere. To get their parents to choke up their food the chicks peck at a red "target" spot located on the bottom part of their bill. The food is then either held in the tip of the bill for the chicks to peck at or it is regurgitated on the ground in front of the young birds. After almost two months of this the young are ready to take wing and become masters of their own fate. We hope. Sometimes fate takes an interesting turn with Glaucous gulls, however. When they finally have the urge to mate at age three they may take a shine to a gull of a different species, such as a Glaucous-winged gull (look it up in your bird guide), and actually nest and produce young from this mixed marriage. It's not unusual for gulls of all species to do this, except the hybrids that result can be downright confusing for the likes of us bird watchers. Take heart, though, the gulls themselves also have problems sorting each other out, and when the next generations of hybrids breed they may even look more odd than their parents. That's why gulls are about the most challenging family of birds to identify. A few other interesting tidbits about Glaucous gulls and gulls in general are that: they can drink either salt or fresh water, and eliminate excess salt through a pair of glands on the top of the head above the eyes; they are gregarious and roost together in flocks on water or land and breed together in colonies; they spit up 2 inch-long, loose pellets of harder indigestible parts of their food; like crows and ravens, they will grab a hard-shelled crab or sea urchin, carry it aloft and drop it on a hard surface to crack it open; and they can swim well with their webbed feet but will not swim underwater like loons and some ducks. A few other common names of this giant gull are: blue gull, burgomaster gull, harbor gull, ice gull, owl gull, white-winged gull and white minister! One of these white ministers, banded in the Netherlands, lived to be 21 years old. » List of Yupik Birds

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