Last spring my upstairs neighbors had triplets. My upstairs neighbors are Herring Gulls, and they’ve been nesting on my roof, presumably since before I moved in. That May, I’d heard their parents’ quiet “mew” calls as they negotiated a site for the nest. Then one day they appeared with mouthfuls of twigs and leaves. During heat waves and downpours, I pictured them above my bedroom dutifully incubating eggs. Finally, one day in June, I heard chicks. We listened to their tiny calls day after day, and I finally caught a glimpse of them in July. It was surprisingly emotional to see the fruits of their parents’ labor—fluffy, curious little birds, on their way to independence.
My avian neighbors are two of many, many adult gulls who raise young on the rooftops of downtown Portland each summer. Islands in the Gulf of Maine are Herring Gulls’ historic breeding habitat, but human disturbance has pushed them into downtowns. Flat roofs (and many not-so-flat roofs) provide suitable enough nesting habitat. Once you notice one nest in the city, you may start seeing young gulls anytime you look up between June and August. There are benefits to this strategy—no risk of nests being washed away by the ocean, less danger from predators like Bald Eagles—but also higher chances of chicks falling from a lethal height.
Despite the abundance of buildings for nesting, Herring Gull populations in Portland decline by 5% every year. The number is the same for Great Black-Backed Gulls. These are the largest gulls in the world, with a wingspan just shy of an eagle’s, yet, to quote a fisherman I met this winter, “they have the fear of man in them.” They used to nest on rooftops infrequently, but are taking to it more and more.
Lacking the intrepidness to climb a ladder to my own rooftop, this month I joined University of New England Professor Noah Perlut at the Portland Museum of Art to band some of this year’s gull chicks. On islands, gulls nest relatively in the open, but on buildings, they always nest against something. The Portland Museum of Art has a complex of roofs with lots of border walls and HVAC structures to nest against. The museum also has staff who are clearly enamored with the gulls. During our visit, employees from several departments volunteered to look for chicks and hold brooms in the air (protective parents will dive at whatever point is highest). I helped collect chicks hiding in corners and handed them off to Dr. Perlut, who fitted them with an aluminum federal band and his own lab’s orange band with field-readable letters (see above photo; the chick is alive and well and is getting banded).
Holding a baby bird (and helping conservation efforts) is always worth getting pooped on, even if it’s so, so much poop. That morning I got acquainted with many birds; we banded 45 Herring and Great Black-backed Gull chicks in total, all born within the previous one or two weeks. Gulls are precocial birds, meaning they’re feathered and up and about shortly after hatching. Parents learn to identify their offspring by the unique pattern of dark spots on their heads, which is helpful in a colony with many other nests and chicks running around shortly after hatching. These young birds will be flying by late July or early August, but will beg for food well after fledging. Many will migrate, and whether they return to Portland and eventually breed here is a question that Dr. Perlut’s research, which he began in 2011, is trying to answer.
Gulls have become a popular research topic in part because they’re great bioindicators. Herring Gulls in particular are widespread, common, large, and long-lived, which makes monitoring things like their reproductive success an important tool for evaluating overall ecosystem health. The other reason for increased interest in gulls is their alarming population declines in recent decades.
Five percent fewer gulls every year is bad, but I’m grateful that they’re here at all. The desire for feathers and eggs nearly wiped out the Atlantic Coast population of Herring Gulls in the latter half of the 19th century. After the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and they were afforded protection, Herring Gull populations then peaked at the height of open landfills in the 1970s. Unlike more specialized animals, many gull species can survive in a number of habitats and on a variety of diets. Some chicks we banded on the museum roof will grow up to specialize in low-tide foraging, others in dock scavenging. Some will be bold enough to grab fish driven to the surface by feeding whales. Others won’t be. Declining numbers of small fish, landfill closures, and pollution are thought to be a few factors threatening these species in the Gulf of Maine. Some say populations may be returning to historic levels, but the fear is that they hit those and keep falling.
The gulls are back on my roof this year. Neither have bands, so I can’t know for sure, but they’re probably the same pair. They watch the neighborhood from the corner of our building. It’s late in the season for chicks to hatch, but I haven’t heard anything. The adults’ faithfulness to the nest gives me hope that the eggs are still viable. I’m crossing my fingers, since Dr. Perlut said he could try to band them. I’d love for my upstairs neighbors to be an active part of their species’ conservation. Gulls and humans are both known for making messes, but our close proximity to each other comes with some unique opportunities to help clean them up.
You can support Dr. Perlut’s work by reporting the letters on any banded gulls that you see to nperlut@une.edu.
