October 7, 2008

THE RIVER WATCHER

THE LONE GULL

Rex Burress

Early one September morning along the river, flapping determinedly out of the dimness as if it had some destination deadline to meet, a lone gull passed swiftly overhead.

Although it was the coming of the sparse salmon run with a few dead bodies already to pluck, the gull had something else in mind. It was a large Herring Gull, and its lone passage was conspicuous, since they are social birds that usually flock together.

In the following days I would see that lone gull, and it was standing in the shallows near mid October, preening and looking very well fed. Some salmon had died and the loner could eat uncontested except for the vultures that had been hanging around for weeks. Usually, sometime in October, large flocks of ring-billed gulls appear to feast on putrid salmon steaks. Would they return?

So what possessed that herring gull to venture away from the ocean to the Feather River alone? I thought of Bryantís poem about the lone goose "following its solitary way midst falling dew." I thought of questions that have no reply, especially about its origin and what prompted the breakaway from the sea gull crowd. Maybe with memories grown dim but with glittering remembrances of a salmon feast 150 miles inland, it had followed an adventurous call to come, somewhat like the smoldering instincts within the salmon. With strong wings and the freedom to go anywhere, maybe it had elected to travel alone...or maybe a mate had been lost. It was a mystery I would never solve.

Even as I watched for other gulls, I kept watching the loner, and I fancied that it began recognizing me as a harmless part of the landscape. Bird watchers always hope that some of the cautionary traits of wild birds will become more friendly allowing closer observation, but "in wildness is their preservation." Gulls live many years and maybe it had seen me before, but I could only muse about what the gull really thought.

The large number of gull species and various growth changes drives some birders to distraction trying to figure them out, but there was no mistaking the herringís pink legs, size, light gray back, and blackish wing tips. After watching gulls at the Lake Merritt Bird Refuge for 32 years during my job there, I got a certain feeling for the different kinds. Several resemble the herring gull, but the smaller ring-bills and California gulls are more evident. All gulls have the shared characteristic of being scavengers able to eat any meaty thing...and most have combinations of white and gray.

There was also "the man who talked to gulls" at the city refuge, a quaint fellow who would stare at a certain western gull for hours, and the gull seemed to stare back as if under a spell, slowly getting closer to stand a few feet away. Some say gulls have special spirits, and certainly special sensual powers to use in their rambling independence!

"For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not

eating that mattered, but flight."

ñRichard Bach from the book, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"