Mark Lynch
The Gull Guide: North America.
Amar Ayyash. 2024. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
“Gulls are arguably the greatest evolutionary success story in the avian world.” (p. 1)
Birders have a variety of strategies for looking at any flock of gulls. Many beginning birders are happy just to identify our regularly occurring species (Ring-billed, Herring, and Great Black-backed in the northeast) and then move on to other birds. Birders with more experience will search a flock for species such as Lesser Black-backed or perhaps Iceland or Glaucous. Birders with even more experience will start searching for migrating gulls uncommon for their location, such as Bonaparte’s at Wachusett Reservoir. True larophiles will see a large flock of gulls and set up their scope, get their camera ready, and begin to pore over more subtle differences among the gulls, looking at field marks, including orbital color, bill pattern, feather mirrors, and exact color of gray of the mantle. These birders are hoping for something really “sexy” like a European Herring Gull. There are also serious birders who will flatly state that they don’t “do” gulls. Amar Ayyash writes about encountering such a birder in his massive new identification guide, The Gull Guide: North America.
Amar Ayyash is well known in the North American birding community, especially to larophiles. He is one of the leading authorities on the gulls of North America. He hosts the website www.anythinglarus.com and has written many articles and papers on gulls. He is therefore the perfect person to pen a detailed—some might say obsessive—guide to gulls. This book is his first attempt at an identification guide, and he has succeeded in putting most of his considerable knowledge in the text.
I do not look at this book as a true field guide, in the sense that one would lug it out into the field. This book is hefty, large, and long (518 pages), and it is crammed with many photos and pages of dense text. Just look at pages 402–3. These two opposite pages have only dense text with no maps, photos, or illustrations. The Gull Guide is more typical of what has been called an identification guide—second level books that contain much more information about field marks. This is a book to keep in the car or to have handy at home. The Gull Guide is the perfect companion while you review your digital photos of the gulls you noticed that day. That said, recently when I interviewed Ayyash, he said he has seen birders out in the field using this guide!
The first reality this guide reveals to the reader is that it is going to take some serious study to become really good at gull identification. Gulls present some of the thorniest field problems of any group of birds.
Second, gulls have a propensity to wander, even over very long distances. Thus, if you have a deep knowledge of gull plumages, then you have a chance—slim though that may be—of finding something really rare or at least spotting a gull unusual for your location. Of course, the best way to learn gulls is to get out into the field to look at gulls and take lots of photos. That’s the great thing about many gulls: they are often lounging in parking lots or loafing on beaches or wheeling around fast-food stores. I have found Lesser Black-backed and Iceland gulls among the many Ring-billed Gulls searching for worms on a high school athletic field in Worcester County. Gulls follow boats at sea and hang about flocks of ducks. There are many places where gulls are easy to see, and sometimes they allow a close approach, unlike warblers and sparrows. Although sifting through a large flock takes time, this habit is worth it even if you don’t find anything out of the ordinary. You will at least better know the variety of plumages of the common species and will be better positioned to recognize something unusual.
“Finally,” Ayyash writes, “every gull flock encountered is an opportunity to learn something new and the opportunities are endless. Most times, we’re able to confidently label a bird in question, but some will defy identification.” (p. 3) Ayyash writes that not being able to identify some odd gull is nothing to feel bad about: “By no means should leaving a bird unidentified ever be written off as a loss.” (p. 3)
The Gull Guide covers 36 species and most of their recognized subspecies, as well as a number of hybrids. The guide begins with a meaty section on gull topography (p. 7–17). This section includes detailed descriptions of feather tracts, wing patterns above and below, and the bare parts—including bill color, eye color, orbital ring color, and leg color. There is also an illustration of the Kodak Gray Scale (KGS), part of a system that Steve N. G. Howell used to standardize color usage in bird descriptions (p. 14–16). For gulls, this gray scale is particularly important in determining many adult species. This section has some of the largest illustrations in the book.
Next is a section on “Ageing and Molt.” (p. 17–29) As Ayyash writes: “Few families of birds provide observers with the opportunity to study plumage in quite the way gulls do.” (p. 17) Gulls can have two, three, and four molt cycles which affect the appearance of any gull. Ayyash embraces the H-P-H (Humphrey-Parkes-Howell) system used to catalog molt. “This system aims to unify molt in birds by establishing homologies.” (p. 18) I suspect that getting a handle on the H-P-H system and applying it to descriptions of gulls is where some birders decide that they really do not want to get this far into gull identification.
Following this section are some general pointers about gull identification (p. 30–56). These hints include looking at relative size, while taking into consideration distance and lighting. The latter can often affect the gray on a gull’s back. This section has many color photographs. There is a nice full-page color and pattern chart of leg color, mantle shade, wingtip color and pattern, orbital color, bill pattern, and eye color of the breeding species. The section on aberrations includes details and photos of melanistic, leucistic, and calico plumages. There are even photographs of a gull’s eye area infested with lice and a Lesser Black-backed Gull with a sublingual fistula. (p. 55)
Finally, there are the species accounts (p. 57–501). Each account is at least several pages long, even for species that have appeared only a handful of times in North America. Each account includes an overview of the species, notes on taxonomy and races, range (including a small colored map), a large section on identification, notes on similar species, and hybrids, if any. The section on the American Herring Gull (Larus smithsonianus) runs from page 213 to 235, with 39 color photographs.
The American Herring Gull is part of what Ayyash labels the Herring Gull Complex (p. 213). This group includes the American Herring Gull (L. smithsonianus), the European Herring Gull (L. argentatus), and the Vega Gull (L. vegae). “There is no doubt Herring Gulls can present great identification challenges, if not the greatest, in large gull identification. They possess a spectacular degree of variation, especially in their earlier plumages.” (p. 214). European Herring Gulls have been found in Newfoundland and may be mostly overlooked here in New England.
In addition, Ayyar describes an Iceland Gull complex (p. 387–434). This group includes Thayer’s Gull (L. glaucoides thayeri), Kumlien’s Gull (L. g. kumlieni), and Iceland Gull (L. g. glaucoides). The status and relationship of these species or subspecies is still not clear, mostly because they breed so far north and field studies have been few. Are they separate species, subspecies, or something else? A full-page illustration of the variety of outer wing patterns is presented to illustrate the identification challenges with these birds (p. 388).
The deeper one digs, the more apparent it becomes that our knowledge of how Iceland Gulls behave on the breeding grounds is very much in its infancy, and that this taxonomy is truly encumbered by a dearth of data. (p. 328)
Despite all that has been said and written about this complex, at the time of this work, no comprehensive effort to closely survey the Iceland Gulls has been made. The few studies that have been conducted on the breeding grounds do not lend themselves to meaningful interpretations. (p. 427)
Ayyash includes an additional seven pages of “Commentary” (p. 427–34) with 29 photographs just on this Iceland Gull Complex.
The section on hybrids is extensive (p. 435–83). Ayyash treats seven of what he considers the most commonly encountered hybrids. Six of them are named: Olympic Gull (Glaucous-winged x Western), Cook Inlet Gull (Glaucous-winged x American Herring), Nelson’s Gull (Glaucous x American Herring), Seward’s Gull (Glaucous x Glaucous-winged), Great Lakes Gull (Great Black-backed x American Herring), and Appledore Gull (American Herring x Lesser Black-backed Gull).
Gulls are a tough group of birds to identify, particularly the larger Larus species. The birder has to consider molt, devilishly similar species, a set of field marks, plumage aberrations, wear, and hybrids. What else could further complicate a gull identification? Something that was not on my radar is that there is an outside possibility that some gull rarity could be of captive origin.
As unusual as it is to keep gulls in captivity, Miami-based bird keeper Charles P. Chase admitted to importing several “Band-tailed Gulls” to Miami in 1968 (Olson 1976). (Coincidentally this was the same year in which L. belcheri was recorded in Florida.) Chase reported that none of his birds had escaped from his collection, nor were any sold in Florida. (p. 152)
The reader can understand why a birder will, unfortunately, decide to not do gulls.
But Ayyash is not done yet. The species accounts section of the The Gull Guide ends with an Appendix (p. 484–501). This section looks at four species. Heuglin’s Gull (L. fuscus heuglini) is a subspecies of Lesser Black-backed Gull that breeds in eastern Russia. Ayyash alerts the reader to the growing number of L. fuscus on the North American west coast and that some of those records could be of this subspecies. The Taimyr Gull (L. f. taimyrensis) breeds in Arctic Russia and has a taxonomic status that is “unresolved and fundamentally perplexing.” (p. 489) There have been two reports from Midway Island of 1st cycle birds. Pallas’s (Great Black-headed) Gull (Ichthyaetus icthyaetus) is a monotypic species that breeds in Eastern Europe, southwest Russia, and Kazakhstan. There has been one record from Shemya Island in the Aleutians, seen from May 2–4 in 2019 but found dead 10 days later. Finally, there is the Gray Gull (Leucophaeus modestus), an attractive gull that breeds in the Atacama Desert of Chile. There has been one confirmed report in the ABA area from Florida in 2023. The Gull Guide ends with a glossary and index.
The Gull Guide is a dense book. The species accounts also contain lots of interesting information about each species, not just identification details. Under the Ivory Gull (Pagophila eburnea) (p. 87–91) Ayyash writes that this “showstopper” is “the only gull with a KGS value of 0.” (p. 87) Sadly, populations of Ivory Gulls are declining.
Major population decreases from some nesting sites have resulted from warming temperatures and the disappearance of sea ice, from contaminants, and from hunting, The Canadian breeding population in the early 2000s was estimated at only 1,000 birds, less than half the number estimated during the 1980s. (p. 87)
The Gull Guide is an amazing achievement. Though he has written many short pieces for publication, this guide is Amar Ayyash’s first book. If anything, this guide is too much of a good thing. The Gull Guide contains so much written information and numerous photographs, many birders may feel overwhelmed. The type is on the small side, but still readable. Most of the photographs are also on the small side: 2.5 x 2.5 inches, though there are also a number of larger photographs. The overall layout is good but very tight. I imagine this layout was necessary in order to fit all of what Ayyash wanted to include. This book is one any serious birder should own, but to be used as a reference guide to be read at leisure at home or kept in the car. This book invites studying.
Amar Ayyash has a deep passion for everything about gulls and has now shared his knowledge with the general birding public. A public that he sees has a lot in common with gulls.
“In many ways, they are similar to Homo sapiens: omnivores exploiting and consuming whatever they cross paths with.” (p. 2)
To listen to Mark Lynch’s conversation with Amar Ayyash about The Gull Guide for WICN radio, go to: https://wicn.org/podcast/amar-ayyash/.