True North

Churchill's First
Ross' Gull

Some time around midmorning the next day, as we were heading out of town, the late Tom Davis, who was leading another birding group for the Linnaean Society of New York, came roaring around the corner spraying gravel as his van skidded to a stop next to ours. Waving wildly in the direction of the docks, he began spitting expletives in his deeply steeped Long Island accent... and then the words "Ross' Gull". No sooner had the name left his mouth than my foot fell hard on the throttle. In the moments it took me to reach the waterfront, my mind was reeling and I did my best to interpret for my passengers the half-crazed behavior to which they were now being subjected.

Three years earlier, Ross' Gull had been virtually unknown to North American birders: a diminutive, pink gull with a black necklace that lived in Siberia. Exquisite and mysterious. But in the winter of 1975, a Ross' Gull had appeared in Newburyport, Massachusetts. The events that followed its discovery -- the convergence of thousands of birders from all over the world, video aired on national news programs, photographs in the New York Times  and Time  magazine -- catapulted birding into the public eye. Birding had arrived.

Now, a mere three years later, lightening had struck again. Every birder who was lucky enough to be in Churchill that year spent the rest of that first day and many hours during the next several days marveling at point blank views of Churchill's first Ross' Gull. The Newburyport bird had been in winter plumage. This bird was in breeding plumage, a first for everyone there.

Spruce Grouse

I left Churchill that year imagining that it could not possibly get any better, and I was right. But, every subsequent trip there has been nearly as thrilling, each in a slightly different way. Some of the visits I remember for particular "life" birds that I saw there: Smith's Longspur; Yellow Rail; Spruce Grouse; and (nesting!) Northern Hawk Owl spring to mind. My eighth and latest visit there, in June of 1997, came closest to matching the exhilaration of the first. Yes, we saw Ross' Gull again -- Churchill has become The Spot in the world to see Ross' Gull since they were discovered nesting there in 1980. But we also arrived in time to catch a migratory flood the volume of which I had rarely seen before -- thousands of snow and Canada Geese, hundreds of Ross' Geese, and dozens of Tundra Swans that had been staging in Churchill, departed to the north nearly continuously all day. The sky was constantly filled with their calls. (We also spotted a small flock of rare Greater White-fronted Geese among them.) Likewise, Pacific Loons that the day before had occupied many of the small ponds in the area, departed singly and in flocks. Arctic Terns, which the day before had been virtually absent, suddenly arrived en mass. A total of forty-two migrating Rough-legged Hawks paraded by us that day, and, at sunset, a Golden Eagle appeared low over the tundra as it hunted for Arctic Hares -- another magical end to another magical day in a magical place.

No two people go to Churchill for exactly the same reasons. But, whatever the reasons, as a destination for naturalists, it never disappoints.

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Northern Hawk Owl

Somewhere in Siberia

Simon Perkins is a field ornithologist with the Massachusetts Audubon Society. As part of his job, conducting international natural history tours, and because his favorite places in the world are arctic, he has traveled to destinations such as Alaska, arctic Canada, Siberia, and northern Norway and Sweden. In the spring of 1999, he will be leading a trip to Lapland.

Closer to home, he serves as a regional editor for National Audubon's bird records journal Field Notes.

He can be reached at sperkins@massaudubon.org.

This article will appear in the September/October issue of Massachusetts Audubon's journal, Sanctuary, in Simon Perkins' column "About Birds."