A few birds from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
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Sabine’s Gull:Sabine’s Gull Nacallngaq Last summer (2011) while participating in a climate change study near Old Chevak in the Lower Yukon Delta I finally discovered where Sabine’s gulls nest and raise their young. When I was teaching in Hooper Bay back in the early 1980’s, I had only seen them migrating through there in the spring. So, one more riddle solved in my life. The Sabine’s gull is probably the handsomest gull I’ve ever laid eyes on. With its striking pied open-wing pattern in the shape of a dark M, its notched tail, graceful tern-like flight, and its dark gray hood, there is no other gull quite like it. Its long dark hood is so remarkable that Yupik people have named it, Nacallngaq (or, Nacallngaaraq), “the bird that wears a parka hood”. When I saw the gulls in July the young were already feeding on their own in the many shallow ponds and pothole lakes in the area where we were conducting our studies. They were so intent on fattening up for their long migration to the South Pacific*, they barely paid us any attention. But back to spring. After the adults arrive from their southern wintering grounds, they don’t even wait for the snow to completely disappear before beginning their mating game. The male selects a territory, then tries to entice a female by giving a long high-pitched call, arching his neck and bowing to her. If he does it just right, and adds a tidbit of food or two to the equation, she selects him to be her mate, quickly scrapes out a shallow depression on open tundra near water, lines it with a bit of seaweed, moss and feathers, and begins laying her eggs. Frequently the nest is a part of a small colony of both Sabine’s gulls and Arctic terns. She lays up to three olive-colored brown-spotted eggs that are incubated by both sexes for 23-25 days. During that period parents defend their nest from predators such as jaegers by dive-bombing them or with a variety of distraction displays like those used by shorebirds. No other gull uses these displays. As with other gull species, the young are precocial, and shortly after the eggs hatch, they are led by their parents to a nearby pond or small lake. However, unlike other species of gull young whose parents feed them for long periods of time, they begin to mostly feed themselves. Their food is the same fare as that of their parents, and includes insects, insect larvae, small fish, crustaceans and marine worms. Sometimes you may see them using a favorite phalarope trick, spinning in circles in shallow water to stir up food items from the bottom. The young are similar to tern young in that they take their first flight even before they are fully feathered, 3-4 weeks after leaving the nest. Their scientific name, Xema sabini, is a combination of the Latin nonsense word, Xema, and the name Sabine, after a British astronomer. I prefer the first part of the name. In fact, the bird is so unique, if I were to rename it, I would call it Xema xema. *Sabine’s gulls that nest in Greenland and Iceland winter off the southern coast of Africa. In 2007 Iain Stenhouse and two colleagues used geolocators to track these gulls from their Arctic nesting sites to their wintering grounds, then back again in spring. The return trip totaled almost 25,000 miles, the longest migration known for any gull.  |
