'Josh' The Ring-Bill Seagull ; or "The Everlasting Joy of Staying Curious"
"Things Seen: 'Josh' The Ring-Bill Seagull ; or The Everlasting Joy of Staying Curious"
It was late August on the beach near the Grand Hotel in Ocean City, Maryland. It was so nice that you didn't think about the rest of the year, warm enough that the rest of the year's weight melts off your shoulders. I was there with my fiancée. We were celebrating her birthday and the year of hard work that brought us here. It was the kind of vacation that's more about rest and reward than activity, which suited us fine. I was here to rest, relax, enjoy her company, and take pictures.
I was out with my camera, doing what I do. A gull caught my attention. Not at all unusual, that was, after all, why I had the camera. I wasn't, in fact, expecting much else. He let me get close. He was curious and unafraid. I tested his boundaries, and he let me get closer than gulls usually do. My fiancée and I started calling him Josh. I don't know why, it just felt right.
It was a great day, the sun was sunning and people were enjoying the surf. Josh hung around for hours. He watched the boats and beachgoers and posed like he knew what was going on. I was getting great shots. I was shooting through a viewfinder, but after a few frames I checked the back of the camera and noticed something: a band barely visible in that shot. That night I posted a photo online, noting the band, that he was Josh, and that I didn't know what kind of gull he was, or if he was really even a he, asking the great community of Tumblr for help.
It's what I do. I see something and try to learn something, sometimes everything, about it. This post was the start. A user online identified him as a ring-billed gull. Another pointed me in the direction of the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory portal. Normally on vacation I wait to process photos, but that day I processed a few of Josh and submitted a report through www.reportband.gov, with band number, date, location, and photos. A few days later a Certificate of Appreciation showed up in my inbox. That's when the mystery of Josh and his blue band began to unfold.
Indeed the Tumblr birders were correct. Josh was a ring-billed gull, an easy ID for any avid birder: Larus delawarensis. Band number 1044-02095 58C. Hatched in 2012 or earlier, making him at least 14 years old, maybe 16 at the most, but that's a guess. He was banded near Varennes, Québec, at coordinates that match Île Deslauriers, a small island in the St. Lawrence River. One of the largest gull colonies in Canada, 51,667 pairs at last count in 2000 — a massive 5% of the global population in one spot. In my research I learned the colony has declined since then, which made me a little sad, but I'm glad Josh was still doing okay. I keep saying "he," but the COA noted the sex as unknown. It's possible they'd be able to tell now. Maybe my pictures can help.
The banding organization was Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Département des sciences biologiques. The program was led by Professor Jean-François Giroux, a wildlife biologist who has studied migratory birds across eastern Canada for decades and received the Pierre Dansereau Prize for his work. The fieldwork that made it possible was carried out by technicians Francis St-Pierre and Réjean Deschênes, who have been UQAM's bird research field team for nearly thirty years. I'd like to think one of them was involved in his banding. I don't know for sure, but I hope to hear from them someday. Since 2009, the project has studied ring-billed gull movements, feeding behavior, and population dynamics, and I had just given them data.
By the time of Josh's banding in 2012, the project was in full swing. Researchers were banding hundreds of birds at the Île Deslauriers colony, weighing chicks and measuring their heads, bills, and tarsus length to assess their condition. Each bird was fitted with unique color bands and web tags to make individual identification easier for anyone who spotted them. Some birds were banded as juveniles at rehabilitation centers, while others were caught and marked at the colony itself. The goal was to track survival, movement, and site fidelity, the tendency to return to the same locations year after year. The data showed that ring-billed gulls are faithful to their post-breeding spots, sometimes showing up at the same McDonald's parking lots and urban parks across Quebec and New England.
Before that day I'd never even heard of Île Deslauriers. Now I had a pretty vivid image of it: likely cold, barren, covered in guano and screaming birds. I wanted nothing more than to visit. But there was no need. The reality was far better. We met in Ocean City instead, a vibrant vacation town on a beautiful, warm Maryland beach. Neither of us was in any hurry to leave.
Learning about their site fidelity was amazing to me. Josh and I vacation at the same place. Had he been just up the beach last year, while I was here? For 15 years? It was so cool, I'd never been so excited. I'm not sure I could ever stay anywhere else when I come to Ocean City again. I look forward to possibly seeing Josh next year.
Bird banding, as I learned, is straightforward. Each band has a unique number tied to a database. Josh had both a standard metal band and a blue color band, easier to spot. Some bands fall off over time, but Josh still had his. The system relies on people reporting sightings. Most banded birds are never seen again, so every report matters. The researchers make it easy: one website, a clear form, a quick reply. They want you to participate, and I'm so glad I did. I encourage others to do the same.
I don't think Josh was rare or special in any scientific sense. He was far from the only one of his kind on the beach, and nothing otherwise stood out. He was just a common gull on a Maryland beach. But he had a life I could trace, at least 14 years, five hundred miles from where he was banded. That matters to me. Curiosity led me to a report form, which led to a certificate, which led to this story, knowledge, and memories I will carry with me forever.
The Everlasting Joy of Staying Curious
The zine is built around "Things Seen" — literally images captured, then investigated. Every photograph leads to a question, and I try not to let those go unanswered. In 2017 I was shot. It changed a lot of things. What stayed intact was my ability to see, to capture my perspective, and to learn. These are the things that have brought me the most joy, before and since. Josh was a reminder of that. Live every day to the fullest. You're never too old to learn and have fun.
Now somewhere in a database, attached to band number 1044-02095 58C, is a record of a bird banded near Varennes in 2012. The certificate shows his last known sighting before my encounter was June 17, 2015 — 11 years earlier. Someday a researcher will pull up that record and see my report, the date, the location, the photos. They'll see Josh, alive and well, five hundred miles from where he was last recorded, some 11 years later, standing on a Maryland beach, posing for a stranger with a camera. Absolutely stunting on them.
That's the point of all this. Stay curious. Ask questions. You will learn something. You might make a friend. You might find a new appreciation for something you'd never thought twice about. But I can promise you WILL be better for it. Even if you only get part of the answers, even if you unearth nothing but questions, that's enough to make the day worth it.
Go notice things. There are more Joshes out there.
If you ever see a banded bird, I hope you'll take a moment to report it at www.reportband.gov. You never know what story you might uncover.
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