Ya know, I really need to stop reading the opinion section of the newspaper! As usual, I get angry about something I read, my blood pressure rises, and I type away at yet another letter to the editor. Then, I get frustrated on my inability to whittle down a complex issue and my strong feelings – me? Strong feelings, nah! - into the sound bites necessary to be heard and understood (and possibly printed) by most of the American media (oh wait, this blog appears on the website of one such American media, I better be careful!) Then, I usually swear a bit, and write some more, start over, or just hit “delete” and move on.

Then, I sit down to write something else – this blog, for example – and I’m all fired up. Luckily, my passion for birds and birding soon brings my blood pressure down to a healthy level, my mind clears, and I enjoy writing again (until I start to think about the issue again, and the vicious cycle begins anew.

Funny, some birders find the same anger and frustration when it comes to the identification of gulls (like that segway?). Personally, I love gulls and the challenges of gull identification. There’s also a trick to it. While I wouldn’t call it easy, it is doable, and anyone can be an expert on gulls with a little patience and practice. Then, feeling comfortable with your ability to identify most of the gulls we come across, we can relax and enjoy their fascinating behavior and the beautiful plumages of some species.

That is why I agreed to lead a field trip entitled the “Gulls of Greater Portland,” for York County Audubon today. Despite a chilly 17-degree start (which actually felt warm compared to the last two days!), 7 folks met me this morning at Portland’s Back Cove.

The goal of today was to learn HOW to identify gulls, not just learn the identification OF gulls. While we hoped for a rare species or two, our attention was focused on our three common winter gulls: Ring-billed, Herring, and Great Black-backed. First, I demonstrated why practicing gull identification is quite simple. My prop: a half-loaf of stale bread. A few handfuls of chum, and we had dozens of study subjects at our feet. Basically, gulls are big and tend to sit still a lot - unlike sparrows for example - providing ample opportunity for in-depth studies.

The trick to identifying gulls is to age them first. Laughing, Bonaparte’s, Black-headed, Little, Ring-billed, Herring, Glaucous, Iceland, Lesser Black-backed, Great Black-backed, and Black-legged Kittiwake all regularly occur in Maine. Plus, Franklin’s, Mew, Thayer’s, Sabine’s, and Ivory have all also occurred. Phew – and you thought there was just one “Seagull” didn’t you?

That’s a lot of choices, but it gets worse. Gulls have more than one plumage. Laughing, Bonaparte’s, Black-headed, Little, and the kittiwake take 2 years to reach adult plumage, so they have a first-year and a second-year plumage. Ring-billed take three, and Herring, Glaucous, Iceland, “less-back,” and Great Black-backed all take 4 or 5 to reach adulthood. Each year, the plumage is different. Therefore – not including the real rarities – we have a potential of 33 plumages to sort through. Then, add the 14 plumages of the rarities – not to mention a few potential first state records (Slaty-backed, Black-tailed, Ross’s, Glaucous-winged, and maybe even something even more surprising! I vote for Mediterranean Gull myself). Oh, and by the way, gulls are really variable and they hybridize. Now, that is overwhelming!

But, when we see a gull we need not run through 33+ plumages, and pages after page in our field guide. Instead, we age it first. A two-year gull has two plumages, so if you age the bird you have divided your options in half. A four-year gull has 4 plumages (sometimes 5) so we divide those choices by 4.

For example, if we see a large gull (most of which take 4 years to gain full adult plumage) and we age it as in its 2nd cycle, we don’t have 20 plumages to sort through, we have 5: the 2nd-cycle plumage of the 5 species of large, four-year gulls. 5 is a more manageable number than 20, and we are now comparing apples to apples. By the way, we use the term “cycle” to illustrate the continuing nature of gull-molt. It’s hard to draw lines between winter and summer plumage, calendar year verses age, etc. Instead, a 2nd-cycle label encompasses all of the following potential labels: 2nd winter, 2nd summer, second basic, second alternate, second year, or second calendar year.

Identification comes next, but this task has been made easier as we only need to compare birds of similar age, and therefore the pertinent field marks of said age class. Basically, we’ve broken down the identification into a more manageable unit, before we even need to crack the field guide.

So, for the rest of the morning, we learned HOW to age (and therefore come closer to identifying) gulls. Visits to Portland’s East End Beach, the Portland fish pier, Mill Creek Cove in South Portland, and Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth provided a plethora of opportunities to study our common gulls, and practice our aging and identification skills. By the end of the day, “quiz birds” were being properly aged left and right!

Although we failed to turn up any less-common gull species, the “Big Three” (Ring-billed, Herring, and Great Black-backed) proved enough of a challenge. Individual variation, the angle of the sun, the direction in which we were viewing, and other factors changed the appearance of many individuals, reinforcing our appreciation of the variation within – let alone between – species.

As the temperature rose into the mid-20’s and we returned to Back Cove, the feedback I received was the “we learned a lot today.” That’s all I can ask.