Herring and Ring-billed Gulls have been flocking through Faville Grove recently. These flocks are often following recently tilled fields, picking through meals of earthworms and other invertebrates. It’s common to see these birds flying at dusk, either north or south, presumably to Rock Lake to the south or Mud Lake to the north.

These gulls are at once notorious and overlooked. Beach-goers may know the Herring Gulls from a stolen sandwich on a Great Lakes beach picnic. Ring-billed Gulls typically occur more inland, but can likewise be found devouring littered french fries and miscellaneous scraps. But many people know these birds as “seagulls,” even while there is no such thing. People might wonder where these birds nest, and what their diet consists of besides human offal.

Nesting spots for Herring gulls are prestigious: the birds will form colonies and overtake entire Great Lakes islands. They have also been documented nesting on the Fleet Farm roof just north of Beaver Dam. Other nesting spots include: breakwaters, sandbars, harbors, and downtown buildings—basically anything that could serve as a surrogate island and protect the nesting colonies from predation by racoons, skunks, opossum, or coyote.

Their diet includes fish, insects, discarded food, shellfish, and even other gulls. The birds are known to follow fishing boats, and will dine on most fish species.

*Ring-billed Gull fishing, photo by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren*

Due in part to their diet and their colonial nesting habit where hundreds or even thousands of pairs congregate, Herring and Ring-Billed Gulls can defoliate small islands of the Great Lakes. In recent decades, a number of small islands along the Door Peninsula have been subject to great inputs of urea from these birds, which subsequently defoliate trees and decimate the understory. However, the surviving species provide another look at the Gull’s dynamic diet: elderberry, red raspberry, black currant, and juneberries now comprise the dominant vegetation of many of these islands; apparently the birds have a sweet spot for berries.

You can find many gull conflagrations around the Faville Grove area now--following a tractor plowing a field or pilfering rivers or marshes, these gulls thrive on finding hasty meals--but as they head to a larger body of water at dusk, they provide a sense of serenity as they rhythmically and buoyantly fly across the setting sun.

Written by Drew Harry, Faville Grove Sanctuary land steward

Cover photo by Eric Bégin