February in New York is grim. The climate sucks, it’s miserably chilly, and the vacations are historical historical past. In some ways, it’s the least romantic month. It’s additionally in some way the proper time to get out and stare at a whole lot of seemingly similar birds, all of which can stare again belligerently into your unhappy, winter-shrunken soul. That’s proper—it’s time for Gullentine’s Day.
This Valentine’s spoof began as a joke in 2019, born of my love of gulls and my buddy’s knack for unhealthy puns. However the thought turned out to be massively in style once I marketed an area outing on the Feminist Bird Club’s Instagram account. Yearly since, dozens of us have braved the chilly to learn to establish our winter regulars: Ring-billed, American Herring, and Nice Black-backed Gulls. We additionally dig into the ID factors of any rarities we discover, corresponding to Black-headed, Laughing, Bonaparte’s, Iceland, or Lesser Black-backed.
Sure, gull identification is slightly fussy, slightly extra centered on refined particulars than most different IDs. When you spend time with a variety of gulls, although, you’ll begin to discover their variations as an alternative of their similarities. (Even when you can not dial in a species ID, with the ability to slim it all the way down to genus remains to be helpful. Comparatively massive and chunky hen with a white head, grey again, and heavy beak? Seems to be like what you’d see if there was a photograph subsequent to the entry for “gull” in a dictionary? That’s a Larus gull.) However as with all of the birding occasions I assist lead, my foremost objective isn’t to make anybody an professional. It’s about serving to folks get snug with ambiguity and puzzling out solutions—expertise that can make them higher birders year-round.
So this February, seize some buddies (or encourage an area birding group to prepare an occasion!) and head to a close-by landfill, sewage pond, or different really romantic hotspot. With gullfriends like these, who wants a valentine?
This story initially ran within the Winter 2025 subject as “Name Your Gullfriend.” To obtain our print journal, turn out to be a member by making a donation today.
