Great Black-Backs

     For an hour and a half one afternoon this November, Sue and I went to the Susquehanna River at Wrightsville, Pennsylvania to enjoy river scenery and whatever birds were on the river.  There were several ring-billed gulls along the river, as always in winter, and a few great blue herons wading the shallows in search of fish.  But I was most impressed with the 40 striking, adult great black-backed gulls we saw on the river from the western shore of a quarter-mile stretch of river between the Route 462 bridge and the Route 30 bridge that span the Susquehanna.  I don't think I ever saw as many adult black-backs as that afternoon along the inland Susquehanna River.  Most of them stood on mid-river rocks, but a few floated on the water.  And there a few mottled-brown immature black-backs on the river with the adults.  It takes four years for a black-backed gull to acquire its adult, breeding plumage of black and white.   
     We saw seven adult black-backs perched on seven outdoor light shields on the mile-long 462 bridge we crossed to get to the western shore at Wrightsville.  Those gulls were totally undisturbed by passing vehicles, so we got close looks at them as we drove by.  Even on those outdoor lights, they were handsome and stately.
     Great black-backs are North America's largest gulls.  And they are becoming more abundant on this continent.  They are about the size of geese and adults are white all over, except for their black upper wings and backs.  When in flight, adult black-backs can resemble adult bald eagles.  But the white bellies of the gulls soon give them away as adult black-backs.  This species also has pink legs and feet, and yellow beaks with a blotch of red on the tip of the lower mandible. 
     Great black-backed gulls are magnificent soaring and wheeling in the sky over the river, and estuaries, and back waters off the oceans.  They bank as they soar, alternately flashing the white of their underparts, then the black of their wings and backs.
     In summer, black-backs eat the eggs and small young of water birds and the adults of smaller species of coastal birds, as well as fish and carrion.  And in winter, they loosely gather with others of their kind, and herring gulls, which are nearly as big as the black-backs.  Now black-backs consume fish they catch themselves, scavenge most anything edible and rob smaller, fish-catching birds of the seafood they caught.    
     Great black-backed gulls nest on both coasts of the North Atlantic from northern Labrador, Central Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and northwest Russia south to Long Island and Brittany.  And they winter from southern Greenland south to the Great Lakes and the North Carolina coast in North America.  Winter is when we in the Middle Atlantic States see the most black-backs.
     Black-backs raise young either in solitary pairs or in little colonies on small coastal islands and isolated peninsulas.  Their nurseries are made of twigs, grass, moss, seaweed and other handy, natural materials in a depression in soil or among rocks on as lofty a spot as they can find and defend from rivals.  Each female lays three buffy-olive eggs that have dark brown blotches.  The young hatch fluffy, pale brown with darker markings, wide-eyed and ready to beg their parents for food.
     Great black-backs are the largest and most majestic of gulls in North America.  I am always happy to see gatherings of them loafing on mid-river rocks or soaring on high along the Susquehanna in winter.  They add more beauty, intrigue and wildness to that river, as they do elsewhere.