NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario – “It’s off the point right now, coming right, going through the top of the trees. This is a white-winged gull, it’s an adult,” said Jean Iron, directing the other watchers’ binoculars, their eyes combing through the mass of gulls whirling chaotically above the Niagara River, forty metres below.
“It’s in front of the red sign going left towards-no… Ok, it’s landed on the water,” she said, switching to her scope for a closer look. “Very much like a Thayer’s gull,” she noted. To an unaided eye, though, all the gulls were just white fleas, circling pointlessly.
It was 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and while most reasonable people were still in bed, a thirty-person group of eager bird watchers led by Iron and Ron Tozel, toting binoculars and tripod-mounted scopes, were perched at a parking stop along the Niagara Parkway, across from a hydroelectric dam on the American side.
All of them were members of Ontario Field Ornithologists (OFO), some having driven in from as far as Kingston. They were here to spot the Iceland, Herring, and Thayer’s gull. And, the most elusive of all, the Little gull. All were sure to be found somewhere, among the thousands of common gulls foraging above the Niagara’s waters.
Bird-watching is gaining popularity in North America. An estimated two million Canadians watch birds for fun. The OFO has 1,300 members, and, according to former president Iron, is one of the largest such groups in North America. OFO organizes monthly birding trips, and publishes their findings in their in-house journal, Ontario Birds.
“Serious birding like this-trying to identify gulls-is not as commonplace as people feeding birds in their backyard. That’s the thing that’s really taking off,” added Tozel. Tozel is a former Algonquin Provincial Park naturalist of 25 years; Iron is a retired school principal. The group they lead was made up mostly of retirees.
The group’s caravan of cars drove south on the Niagara Parkway, making stops at the Whirlpool, then upriver from the Falls, and then several more in Fort Erie. Each time, birders filed out of their cars, set up their scopes, and trained their binoculars on nearby flocks. Occasionally, Tozel and one or more of the experienced watchers debated aloud whether a gull they were watching belonged to this species or that. This sometimes went on for a few minutes, as each offered evidence to back up his case.
“That’s why these trips are so helpful,” remarked Hart Brasche, an academic coach who hailed from Kleinburg, north of Toronto. The leaders are there to confirm sightings, and to share what they see with others so they too can see it, he said. “They tell you the distinguishing features: wing tips, colorations.”
Brasche explained that birding is akin to hunting, but with a twist. “It’s not killing, you’re spotting it. That’s as good as a hit.” But mostly, he added, “It’s a quest for points.” Birders notch up so-called “life points,” one for every new bird species they see. Brasche had amassed over 350, meaning he has seen nearly half of North America’s 716 known bird species.
Justin Ripley, the youngest watcher there, aged 16, compared birding to collecting things. “I have a checklist that I keep, so I try to get as many as I can.” The OFO has the checklist of Ontario bird species online (477-strong), and avid birders dutifully try to fill them out. Ripley had already amassed 200-some “lifers,” as he called them.
But he has not told all of his high school buddies about his hobby. “A lot of people wouldn’t understand, you know, ‘Why go out and look at birds?'” he said.
By 2:00 p.m. the watchers had made their way into Fort Erie, with no trace of the Little gull. A flock that another group had sighted the previous day, seemed to have disappeared completely. The watchers’ last good shot was at Yeager’s Rock, in a residential neighbourhood directly across the river from downtown Buffalo.
But the flock there was too far away to examine closely through their scopes. A pair of residents looked on with bemusement from their living rooms. It was 3:30 p.m., and light was beginning to fade. So were Iron and Tozel’s prospects of glimpsing the Little gull. There would be one fleeting chance, though: watching the flocks as they fly out at dusk, past Niagara-on-the-Lake and toward the middle of Lake Ontario, to roost for the night.
Still, Tozer was able to keep a smile on. “We see more gulls, sometimes, but it wasn’t bad. And we didn’t suffer as much from weather as we do sometimes,” he said, before he and Iron scrambled off towards Niagara-on-the-Lake.
