Ross's Gull on Chicago lakefront, March 2023.
Photo by Matt Zuro

Embracing the challenge of gulls

(published 1-22-25)

Gulls are a little scary. They frighten me. I don’t mean literally, in a Hitchcockian sense. The nightmare comes in trying to sort out their identities.

Skilled birders usually thrive on ID challenges, while others stand back and leave the dirty work to the experts. With gulls, I’m in the latter camp. The intimidation factor is high.

The main issue is plumage variation by age. For some gull species, the transition to adulthood may take four years, with different looks at every stage. Annual feather molt can add further confusion.

Bill, eye and leg colors may change, too. The Black-legged Kittiwake, a small, tern-like gull, does not always display black legs!

Fortunately, help is out there. It comes in the form of Amar Ayyash, a high school math teacher from Orland Park who happens to be one of North America’s top authorities on gull ID. He’s on a mission to make gull watching more fun and less frustrating for birders.

Amar Ayyash and "The Gull Guide."

“Gulls don’t get enough love,” Ayyash told DuPage Birding Club members at a meeting in November. “It’s probably because they don’t have attractive voices or beautiful colors, and some of them feed on our trash.”

All of this makes gulls a tempting group for birders to shy away from.

Ayyash views gull-watching differently. “The fact that it’s challenging makes it appealing,” he told the Wall Street Journal in a 2018 page-one story about the trickiness of gull ID.

Even Ayyash is sometimes stumped, although such occasions are rare. His depth of knowledge is remarkable, acquired from two decades of close gull observation. He readily admits to being obsessed with gulls.

Ayyash operates the website anythinglarus.com, and just published “The Gull Guide,” a 500-pager covering all 36 species found in North America. The book’s introduction offers a framework for how to think about gulls as a group and explains their unique place in the avian world.

In December, Ayyash won the Robert Ridgeway Award for Outstanding Ornithological Publication from the American Birding Association (ABA). “The Gull Guide” is already in its second printing by Princeton University Press.

Ayyash began a national book tour in October. I’ve heard him speak three times so far, including the bird club visit and his appearance on the ABA podcast. He is often asked for tips on how novice birders can overcome their fears about gull ID.

Our region's two most common gulls: Herring Gull,
foreground left, and Ring-billed Gull, right.
Photo by Amar Ayyash

For starters, Ayyash said, focus on adult birds and get familiar with the most common species. Around here, that means Herring Gull and Ring-billed Gull, both year-round residents. A third commoner, Bonaparte’s Gull, is seen here during spring and fall migrations.

About a dozen gull species are annual visitors to northern Illinois, and 20 are on the all-time state list. Fifty species exist worldwide.

Lucky for us, gulls are accessible birds—easy to find and watch. Beaches and shopping center parking lots are good places to look. Gulls are opportunistic feeders, built for survival.

Ayyash recommends getting close to birds on the ground and observing them. If you can, take photos for later study, including flight shots. For gulls in the air, wing tip patterns are the best ID clues.

In this region, winter is prime time for gull-watching along Lake Michigan. Next month, in fact, is the Gull Frolic, a one-day watch party hosted by the Illinois Ornithological Society at North Point Marina in Lake County.  

Gull Frolic birders at North Point Marina in
Winthrop Harbor, Illinois.

Ayyash coordinates the Frolic, now going on 23 years and always a sellout. His annual wish list includes non-frigid weather, open water, and a rare gull or two. A timely sale on white bread would be welcome, too—the Frolic requires dozens of loaves for “chumming.”

“This is not easy birdwatching,” Ayyash said, speaking of winters by the lake. He classifies gull appreciation as a “special subculture” of birding.

But as with every kind of birding, patience and attention to detail usually pays off. With gulls, that often means picking out something different from a sea of gray and white birds. Finding a rarity is always the goal.

A California Gull appeared at the 2024 Frolic, thrilling the chilly spotters. Three months later, a Black-tailed Gull visited Waukegan Beach.

Several gulls, Ayyash writes, are among “the most coveted bird species on the planet.”

Ivory Gull in Quincy, Illinois, January 2015.
Photo by Jackie Bowman

Ross’s Gull is one of them, and birders will long remember the Lake Michigan “Rossy” of March 2023. The rare Arctic native made the local news and spun lifer-seeking hobbyists into a three-day frenzy.

And then there’s the white ghost.

Ayyash still reflects on the adult Ivory Gull he encountered in early January 2018, at the Lake County Fairgrounds in Grayslake. He was alone, checking the parking lot—a reliable gull hangout because it’s near a landfill. The temperature was below zero when a small, pure-white bird dropped into plain view, gifting Ayyash an unforgettable holy grail moment.  

List-chasing birders do love a rare gull. The fairgrounds Ivory Gull didn’t stick around but another one did, three years earlier in downstate Quincy. Birders throughout the Midwest hustled to see it, the state’s first Ivory in 20 years. Only four records of Ivory Gull exist for Illinois.

For the everyday “seagulls” to the rarities, Ayyash urges us to give gull-watching a fair chance. We can learn from gulls, and perhaps come to admire their tenacity and versatility. Some are quite beautiful, too.

In his book, Ayyash notes that no gull species is known to have gone extinct. They are out there, available for watching, in all kinds of weather.

Copyright 2025 by Jeff Reiter. All rights reserved.

The year in birds

Conservation progress and remarkable sightings highlighted 2024

(published 1-1-25)

Lake County stunner: This Scissor-tailed Flycatcher entertained watchers for
two weeks at Prairie Wolf Forest Preserve. Photo by Matt Zuro.

A Yellow-billed Loon appeared on the Las Vegas Strip last March, swimming in the Fountains of Bellagio. Fortunately, what happened in Vegas didn’t stay there for long. The daily water show hit pause while biologists captured the Arctic vagrant and took it to a safe place serving fish.

One month later, a similar scenario played out in suburban Wilmette. This time, the wayward bird was a young Whooping Crane making her first northward migration. Officials from the International Crane Foundation mobilized quickly to rescue the endangered wader, later releasing it at Horicon Marsh, near ICF’s Wisconsin headquarters.

This well-tracked Whooping Crane caused a scene
in Wilmette last April after stopping short on its
northern migration. Photo by Scott Judd.

These were good outcomes for the individual birds, and memorable moments for a few lucky spectators. More avian success stories were still to come in 2024, along with potential for saving thousands of birds every year.

Birders breathed a sigh of relief when the owners of Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center took steps to reduce bird collisions with the building’s glass, installing “Feather Friendly” film in a $1.2 million project completed before fall migration.

The retrofit was largely in response to that awful night in October 2023 when more than 1,000 migrating birds perished from window strikes at McCormick Place.

Patterned glass in combination with a citywide Lights Out program during peak migration periods makes Chicago safer for passing birds. A needed next step is for Chicago City Council to adopt mandatory bird-friendly building design guidelines.

Evanston and Skokie already require builders to practice bird-safety measures. In 2024, Lake County enacted ordinances as well.

Nationwide, building collisions kill more than one billion birds annually, according to studies. A new documentary called “Broken Flight” screened at the Chicago International Film Festival in October. See it if you get a chance.

Another hot-button issue concerns the use of poison to control rat populations. Last spring, three Great Horned Owls in Lincoln Park died from rodenticide poisoning—news well covered by mainstream media. Since then, Chicago Bird Alliance (formerly Chicago Audubon) has amped up pressure on the city to pursue alternate rat control methods that are both less harmful to urban ecosystems and more effective than rodenticide.

Big wins for nature

Voters in four counties—DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry—supported their forest preserves in November by approving referendums to expand, restore and protect open lands. The ballot measures were about more than birds, of course, but the results were a win for the critical habitats that support them.

A Black-necked Stilt prepares for landing at Muirhead Springs
Forest Preserve in Kane County. Photo by Bob Andrini.

Galena, Homewood, Lake Bluff and St. Charles gained official Bird City Illinois status for their active and ongoing commitment to protect and conserve birds and their habitats. The state now boasts 10 Bird City communities. Audubon Council of Illinois started the program in 2022, modeling it after the successful Bird City Wisconsin program.

Waukegan, already a Bird City Illinois member, named the Piping Plover its official city bird in May, vowing to “continue to support the protection and conservation of our lakefront and the unique dune and swale habitat crucial to the recovery of the Great Lakes Piping Plover.”

Plovers raised families on Chicago and Waukegan beaches last summer, contributing to a solid year for the region’s fragile population. A record 81 pairs of Piping Plovers nested around the Great Lakes—one pair more than in 2023 and up from about a dozen pairs in the 1980s.

One of the two successful Illinois pairs in 2024 were Imani and Sea Rocket on Montrose Beach, Imani being the son of legendary pipers Monty and Rose. The latter couple made history in 2019 by hatching Chicago’s first Piping Plover chicks in 71 years.

Illinois’ only breeding colony of Common Terns also prospered in 2024. The state-endangered species produced 33 chicks (from 22 nests) in the harbor at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Lake County.

Notable 2024 sightings

Birders in pursuit of locally rare species were busy (and successful) throughout the year. I’ll hit some of the highlights here, roughly in chronological order.

The Elgin Black-throated Gray Warbler.
Photo by Jackie Bowman.

The first eye-popper was a Black-throated Gray Warbler in Elgin, which relied upon a backyard feeder throughout a severe cold snap in January. Dozens of birders called it a lifer.

A California Gull flew in for the Gull Frolic, a popular February watch party at North Point Marina in Winthrop Harbor. Talk about a bird with good timing!

The “Cali” would not be the rarest gull to visit the Lake Michigan shoreline. A Black-tailed Gull turned up at Waukegan Beach in May, just the third Illinois record for the species.

Throughout the winter and well into April, Red Crossbills were regular at Morton Arboretum in Lisle—a classic “invasion year” for the species. Some years we don’t see any crossbills at all.

At least 200 birders saw this Sage Thrasher at Hidden Lake
Forest Preserve in Glen Ellyn. Photo by Randall Everts.

In April, a Cinnamon Teal triggered a rush to Will County, just before a Burrowing Owl made a shocking appearance at Montrose in Chicago. Another species from the west, Sage Thrasher, visited Blackwell Forest Preserve in DuPage. A second Sage Thrasher (or the same one?) would surface at Hidden Lake Forest Preserve in late September. The latter was observed for five weeks, sometimes in the company of a Northern Mockingbird.

Also in DuPage, a Ruff surprised birders at Greene Valley Forest Preserve, about a month after one was spotted in Chicago’s Richton Park. The distinctive shorebird is usually found in Africa and Eurasia.

Kane County hosted Say’s Phoebe in March and Black-necked Stilt in April. A highly watched stilt pair spent the summer at Muirhead Springs Forest Preserve, raising two young.

Muirhead lived up to its growing reputation as a birding hotspot. Coveted visitors included American Avocet, Glossy Ibis and Smith’s Longspur (April); Black Tern and Loggerhead Shrike (May); Franklin’s Gull (July); Red-necked Phalarope (August); Common Tern and Eared Grebe (September); White-faced Ibis and Kane County’s first Black-bellied Whistling Duck (October).

The Forest Preserve District of Kane County is in early planning to build an accessible, multi-level birdwatching tower at Muirhead Springs. Completion is tentatively set for 2027.  

Dedicated chasers scurried up to Wisconsin to witness the state’s first-record Varied Bunting and Bar-tailed Godwit, near Grafton and Hartford, respectively.

This vagrant Lark Bunting appeared in Chicago's
Park 566. Photo by Matt Zuro.

Feathered goodies at Montrose, our state’s most-birded venue, included a breeding plumage Red-throated Loon; American Barn Owl; Laughing Gull; Marbled Godwit; Whimbrel; Least Bittern; Eastern Whip-poor-will; Cerulean, Kirtland’s and Prairie Warblers; Spotted Towhee; and Say’s Phoebe.

In May, a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher feasted on cicadas in Arlington Heights. The epic hatch provided an easy food source, elevating nesting success for many bird species.

Prairie Warbler was a nice find at Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve in DuPage, with two birds present into July. Lake County’s first Chuck-will’s Widow landed at Illinois Beach State Park, and Western Tanager delighted watchers at Glacial Park in McHenry County.

A Yellow-crowned Night Heron camped on the Naperville Riverwalk for three weeks starting in mid-August.

At least two Blue Grosbeaks summered at Morton Arboretum in Lisle; a Kentucky Warbler refueled there in September.

Chicago’s Park No. 566 yielded two grassland species from the west, Lark Bunting and Chestnut-collared Longspur. On Veterans Day, a fly-by Common Raven at the lakeside venue was the first in Illinois since 2007.

A Western Cattle Egret made friends with the bison at 
Fermilab. Photo by Haley Gottardo.

Area birders responded in late August to a rare opportunity to witness a Swallow-tailed Kite. The graceful raptor spent days soaring over the Lockport area in Will County.

Back in Chicago, birders got twitchy over a hybrid Brewster’s Warbler at Montrose and a late-September Townsend’s Warbler in Jackson Park.

Hawkwatchers at Greene Valley (Naperville) observed three Golden Eagles and 10 Rough-legged Hawks during the fall count season. A Western Meadowlark visited the hill in October.

Just before Halloween, a Western Cattle Egret grazed with the bison at Fermilab in Batavia, and another visited Chicago Botanic Garden.

Also in October, a young Anna’s Hummingbird parked itself on a backyard feeder in Princeton (Bureau County). The rare hummer—only the second record for Illinois—remained a daily customer well into December and might try to overwinter. 

This off-course Anna's Hummingbird delighted birders
for many weeks in Bureau County. Photo by Steve Zehner.

The year’s penultimate month is known for uncommon sightings and 2024 played true. Notables included Harlequin Duck (Chicago and Winthrop Harbor); Rufous Hummingbird (Oswego, first Kendall County record); Townsend’s Solitaire (Libertyville); and Harris’s Sparrow (Elburn).

In December, the state's first Short-tailed Shearwater zipped by Montrose Point. Young birders call that a Mega.

A beautiful Snowy Owl appeared in McHenry County before Christmas, thrilling birders and photographers for 10 days. Then tragedy: the bird died upon impact with a vehicle on Bull Valley Road.

The name game

Several birds mentioned above are named after people, a reminder that some will receive new names starting in 2025. 

Currently, about 100 American bird species claim eponymous or honorific names. A few birds recall "individuals who engaged in what we think most people today would agree was reprehensible behavior,” declared the American Ornithology Society. Watch for AOS to soon announce a limited first wave of name changes. Eventually, all birds named after people will receive more descriptive titles. 

Two species are presently named after John J. Audubon. In 2024, more Audubon-branded organizations around the country adopted new identities to help distance their work from the famous artist's personal legacy of racism.

The ill-fated McHenry County Snowy Owl.
Photo by Paul Clifford.

Awards and milestones

Tamima Itani was named a Volunteer of the Year by Illinois Department of Natural Resources for her leadership in the protection of Piping Plovers and their habitat at Chicago’s Montrose Beach.

Donnie Dann of Highland Park received the city’s Environmental Award for his tireless work on behalf of birds, particularly his advocacy for bird-safe building design. Dann is also deeply involved with the aforementioned Common Tern conservation efforts in Lake County.

Glen Ellyn’s Willowbrook Wildlife Center rebranded as the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center. A major expansion and upgrade project at the facility is set for completion this spring, with a public grand opening celebration on June 5.

The debut Urban Birding Festival in Chicago, held in September, was a massive success with some 460 registrations. It’ll return in 2025.

Retired American diplomat Peter Kaestner became the first and only birder to list 10,000 species, fulfilling his lifetime quest.

Anniversaries: Illinois Beach State Park Hawkwatch, 25 years; Wooded Isle bird walks in Chicago’s Jackson Park, 25; Audubon magazine, 100; American Bird Conservancy, 30.

Birders we miss

Jon J. Duerr, former head of the Kane County Forest Preserve, passed away in February. A preserve near South Elgin was named for him in 2004.

We also remember John Hebert, a DuPage Birding Club stalwart; beloved Montrose birders Owen McHugh and Craig Millard; and Aurora’s irrepressible Vernon LaVia. (Owen and Vern left us in 2023.)

In September, birders nationwide said goodbye to Sandy Komito, a central figure in Mark Obmascik’s book, “The Big Year.” Actor Owen Wilson played a character based on Komito in the movie version.

A retirement for the birds

I’ve had more time for birding and travel since retiring in July. My first “mission trip” was to Texas, where I attended the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in early November. I’ll write about it soon.

A visit to Seattle in September wasn’t bird-focused but an afternoon wildlife cruise with Puget Sound Express proved to be a highlight. Tufted Puffin, the trip’s primary target, was well seen by all, including my wife and son. Rhinoceros Auklet, too.

Tufted Puffin by Eric Ellingson.

A welcome bonus bird on the cruise was Red-footed Booby, spotted on the Port Townsend waterfront. The out-of-range tropical seabird had been a local sensation for about six weeks at the time.

The household yard list didn’t grow in 2024 but my watch time was rewarded with Common Yellowthroat, Red-headed Woodpecker, and Winter Wren. Years go by without my seeing these species in the backyard.

My favorite new book was “The Birds That Audubon Missed,” by Kenn Kaufman. Pick it up for some fascinating insights about birding and ornithology in the early and mid-1800s. Learn about the Carbonated Warbler, too!

I read “Birding with Benefits,” the hobby’s first romance novel, for research purposes. I’m still a little flushed.

I also enjoyed “The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird,” by Jack E. Davis. The 2022 book from the Pulitzer Prize winner is timely now that the eagle is finally, officially, our national bird. For once, Congress got something done without a fight.

Some eagle watching on the Mississippi River would be a fine way to begin 2025. Or maybe I'll just fill up the feeders and stay home. Birders have options, and they're all good.

Copyright 2025 by Jeff Reiter. All rights reserved.