The Long Life of a Local Gull

Kathy Van Der Aue, one of the regular bird banders at our Birdcraft Sanctuary, dropped off a note this morning about an interesting letter the bird banding team received from the federal bird banding laboratory in Patuxent, Maryland:

“The Connecticut Audubon Birdcraft Museum banding team has just received a band recovery record of a Herring Gull which was banded on Chimon Island by a CAS team on July 14, 1988. This bird was a nestling when it was banded; therefore when the band was recovered, on August 16, 2014, in Southport, the bird was 26 years old.

“The 1988 team consisted of Miley Bull, Carl Trichka and Pete Marra. The band was recovered in Southport by Craig Justman. His gull had a strong homing instinct. Herring Gulls do short, mainly coastal, migrations during the winters but this one returned to a spot within a couple of miles of where it was hatched.”

Chimon is one of the Norwalk Islands. Milan Bull is Connecticut Audubon Society’s senior director of science and conservation. Carl Trichka was a bird bander for CAS. Pete Marra went on to become a research scientist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and will be the keynote speaker at our annual meeting on October 2 and the Yale Peabody Museum.