Jupiter and Mercury Visible After Sunset This Week

I’m sure you are familiar with this scenario: getting on the internet for a specific nugget of information and then finding yourself some significant time later on some odd, but interesting tangent, and wondering, “How did I end up here?!” Browsing the Museum collections can be a bit like a 3-dimensional internet search, where examining one specimen can bring you on a voyage across space and time to a fascinating and unexpected place.

I recently had that experience when checking our collection to see what material we had of Black-legged Kittiwake. In an earlier blog, I related my recent sighting of this gull species in southern Manitoba where it is very rarely seen. I was curious to see if we had any kittiwake specimens. As it turns out, we have no adult specimens, but I found that the Museum houses some kittiwake eggs!

Now, unless you are a student of ornithology or an avid birder, you are unlikely to recognize this name. Bent was a successful businessman with an interest in birds, and was commissioned by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. to write a series entitled, Life Histories of North American Birds. This series became his own life history, as he eventually produced 21 volumes published from 1919-1968, with the last few completed posthumously from his notes. Although encyclopedic in nature and remaining a standard reference, these books are surprisingly entertaining to read and contain some wonderful natural history writing that gives an authentic account of what fieldwork and life (not just bird-life) was like in the early 1900’s, and shares the joy of discovery.

Getting to the islands was an adventure in itself: “Our introduction to the famous fur-seal islands was characteristic of that dismal climate. We had been sailing by compass all night from Bogoslof Island, and morning found us still groping in the prevailing thick fog, which serves to keep the seals’ coats cool and moist, but is a menace to mariners. At last, when we had about concluded that we had missed our reckoning and had passed the islands, we began to see a few of these large white-breasted auklets flying past us to the eastward. Turning, we followed them, and before long we could hear the barking, roaring, and bellowing of the fur seals in their rookeries on St. Paul Island. Feeling our way carefully toward them until we could dimly see the outline of the cliffs, we crept along the shore into Village Cove [the main town].”

How about navigating by auklet instead of GPS!! That would sure cramp our style nowadays when we even have to punch in coordinates to find the local Tim Horton’s, never mind a tiny island in a northern sea!

Despite the initial doubtful outcome of the trip, Bent had no reservations about his work once there: “On July 7, 1911, I spent one of the most eventful afternoons of my life studying the nesting habits of this and the hosts of other sea birds that make their summer home on the wonderful, little, rocky islet of the Pribilof group, Walrus Island.”

I am fond of Bent’s description of the kittiwakes and their nests from which our Museum eggs came: “In Bering Sea we found this to be one of the commonest gulls and found it breeding on all of the islands where it could find high rocky cliffs. On Walrus Island, where there are no high cliffs, we had an unusually good opportunity to examine the nests. Among the hosts of sea birds which made their summer home on this wonderful island a few little parties, of from four to six pairs each, of Pacific kittiwakes found a scanty foothold on the vertical faces of the low, rocky cliffs. Here their nests were skillfully placed on the narrow ledges or on little protuberances which seemed hardly wide enough to hold them, and often they were within a few feet of nesting California murres [another puffin relative] or red-faced cormorants, with which the island was overcrowded. The nests were well-made of soft green grass and bits of sod securely plastered onto the rocks and probably were repaired and used again year after year. They were well-rounded, deeply cupped on top, and lined with fine dry grass. Most of the nests, on July 7 [1911], contained two eggs, some only one, but none of them held young. The incubating birds and their mates standing near the nests were very gentle and tame. We had no difficulty in getting near enough to photograph them.” Or, apparently, to collect a few of their eggs!

Taking short trips like this in the Museum time machine, via collections and the natural history and human stories they tell, makes me wonder at times if I was somehow born a century (or more!) too late. Not as a knock on the modern approach, but wouldn’t it be fun to open up a modern nature guidebook and find such enjoyable, yet informative prose? Bent’s descriptions convey a joy in observation and discovery, as well as a respect for the organism that is inspiring. Museum collections and the stories they tell can help us make a better connection and foster a deeper appreciation for our fellow Earthlings and their habitats, something that can only be for the good as our world view is increasingly dominated by concrete, steel, asphalt, and electronic/entertainment media.

Most of us, other than those interested in birds, don’t take much notice of the comings and goings of gulls. Some might even consider “seagulls” a nuisance of sorts as they soar effortlessly overhead… and metabolize. If pressed for natural history facts, though, it might be observed that gulls are here when it’s warm(er) and gone when it’s cold. Which seems simplistic, but is actually quite accurate. Gulls are much better harbingers of spring than the proverbial robin. Robins frequently overwinter in the southern third of Manitoba, whereas gulls of all species are almost universally gone by early December and will return in numbers only in late March or April.

For this reason, seeing any gull in December is noteworthy. So as I crossed the border from North Dakota into Manitoba returning from a post-Christmas soccer tournament in Minneapolis, I was shocked to see a gull flying north along Highway 75 parallel to the car. Despite eye-rolling from family (now used to, but not encouraging of, Dad’s bird diversions), I found a spur road and tried to track down the unusual feathered visitor. The impeccable timing of a train passing between us and the flying bird, and the complication of choosing the wrong side of a divided highway made a re-sighting challenging. But with help from bemused passengers, and after crossing to the west side service road, we did glimpse the gull just before it magically vanished! Cruising the service road just south of St. Jean Baptiste I managed to spot the bird huddled forlornly among the snow-drifted cattails of the drainge ditch beside the highway.

It was clearly a first-year bird, probably a Black-legged Kittiwake! It wasn’t until back in Winnipeg and after studying field guides and sharing my photos with more knowledgeable birders that I was certain. (I’ve always liked gulls, but their identification I find tricky.) This is only the third record for southern Manitoba! There are fewer than ten records for the province and most have been during the summer along Hudson Bay. The kittiwake is one of the more pelagic (ocean-going) gulls, breeding on cliffs along northern and temperate oceans of North America, Eurasia, and the high Arctic, spending the remainder of the year at sea. So it is not surprising it is such a rarity in southern Manitoba.

Because the kittiwake looked a little out of sorts, was clearly lost, and no one had managed to find the bird subsequently, a little less than a week later I thought I’d see if I could find its carcass to add to the collection. Looking for a mostly white bird in the drifting snow is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack, but I felt it to be a couple of hours well spent  – we have no Manitoba specimens of this species in the Museum collection. So I was back in St. Jean on a bone-chilling morning on a fool’s errand.