Ross's Gull (The two columns that are combined here were published in the January 9 and 16, 1995 Buffalo News.) The Ross's gull is at once the most beautiful and the rarest gull that occurs in North America. It is a small gull, pigeon-sized. Adults appear all white, but their breasts are suffused with the delicate pink that makes them so attractive. In breeding plumage a fine black necklace circles the throat and rises over the back of the head; this is replaced at this time of year by a dark smudge behind the eye. And there is one other black characteristic: a narrow line along the leading edge of the wing that is obscured when the bird is at rest. I have before me a chart of Ross's gull distribution in "Sea-Birds," the definitive North Atlantic reference by Fisher and Lockley. The map is centered on the North Pole and the dots representing sight records are almost all within the Arctic Circle. The restricted Siberian breeding ground is also north of the Arctic Circle. These delicate gulls nest at the farthest northward reach of vegetation: on the ground under stunted alder and willow thickets. There they brood eggs and raise young just inches above the permafrost. Little is known about where Ross's gulls spend the remainder of their year. They don't migrate south like most birds but instead apparently move around the pole probably to the edge of the ice pack. They are seen regularly during these migrations along the north coast of Alaska. The only records in southern Canada or the United States of which I am aware are single birds seen in Illinois and Massachusetts in the 1970s. So you can imagine the great excitement on December 18th when word was spread that an adult Ross's gull was sighted with a group of Bonaparte's gulls over the Welland Canal, within a quarter mile of where another rare bird, an ancient murrelet, had appeared a month earlier. Discovered on the St. Catharines Christmas Bird Count, it will almost certainly represent the outstanding species on all of the North American counts taken this season. The hot-line announced that the bird had been observed for several hours and was floating in the canal at dusk. Bob Andrle, Bob Brock and I drove over early the next morning confident that we would find the gull. When we arrived at 8:00 a.m., we joined a hundred birders already anxiously awaiting the bird's appearance. But it did not show up. All I could think was, "I have jinxed these folks again: like the murrelet, this bird left when it heard that Rising was coming." Word spread that the Ross's gull had left the water after dark and, when last seen, was roosting in the grass on the far side of the canal. Mary Ellen Hebb and several other Ontario birders went around to investigate. The man standing next to me followed them with his telescope. "She's pointing," he called out. "They see it." Then: "She's making neck- slicing movements. She's signaling that..., that...," and finally he blurted it out: "Oh my, she's telling us that it's dead." The shock that went through the crowd was palpable. I could hear the intake of breath and several unprintable comments were voiced. Rapidly the disconsolate birders began to disburse. We waited until the investigators returned. The identification evidence they brought was compelling: many pink feathers and both black-lined primaries. Claw prints in the dirt indicted a great horned owl as the killer. That owl gourmet had picked the Ross's gull out of hundreds of nearby ducks and gulls. It not only thwarted our once-in-a-lifetime observation, but it also set a new low for regional hospitality. * In my investigation of the history of this species I came across some interesting background which I share with you in this column. As should be expected of this bird of the Arctic, its story is intimately associated with exploration of that region. The Ross's gull is named for James Clark Ross, who first sailed to the far north in 1818 with his uncle, John Ross, in search of the elusive Northwest Passage over North America. The younger Ross was at that time only 18. Accompanying them was Edward Sabine, for whom another gull is named. After that unsuccessful voyage Ross joined William Parry for two further Arctic explorations and it was on the second of these in 1823 that he collected the gull later to be assigned his name. He found it on the Melville Peninsula at the north end of Hudson's Bay. Ross's life was exciting and often unbelievably arduous. He joined eight expeditions to the Arctic: on one in 1833 traveling by dog sled to the North Magnetic Pole. On that trip his ship was locked in the ice for three winters! Finally abandoning it in desperation, Ross and other crew members struggled 500 miles over the ice to Baffin Bay where by good fortune they were picked up by a whaling ship. He then turned his interest to the Antarctic, sailing there with the botanist, Joseph Hooker. That expedition is commemorated in the names Ross Sea, Ross Ice Shelf and Ross Island. (Ross's goose, on the other hand, is named for Bernard Ross of the Hudson's Bay Company.) James Ross returned to the Arctic only once more, that time in search of the missing explorer, John Franklin, after whom still another gull is named. It was later discovered that Franklin and all of his men had perished. Although he fell a few miles short, Franklin is credited with discovery of the Northwest Passage. The Ross's gull originally honored James Ross in its scientific name, Larus rossii, as well; but it turned out that William MacGillivray had published another name in 1824. (Although his sighting was after Ross's, publication precedence rules in systematics.) The Latin name MacGillivray assigned and by which we now know this gull, Rhodostethia rosea, relates in both genus and species to the rosy plumage of the adult birds. For 82 years after its discovery Ross's gull breeding grounds were unknown. Few of the gulls were even seen through this period. After one naturalist, R. L. Newcomb, collected several in 1879, his ship foundered and the survivors had to travel by small boat to the Siberian mainland, suffering horribly on the voyage, their captain dying. Through this ordeal Newcomb carried three Ross's gull skins protected under his shirt. Finally in 1905 a Russian explorer, Sergius Buturlin, found a colony of these birds nesting along the Kolyma River delta on the Arctic coast of eastern Siberia. Locating the nests was not easy as a passage from Buturlin's log attests: ""A little low island in a lake is usually selected...and this made the nests very difficult of access, as...a boat can only be used near the banks and must be then dragged over the ice. [This] is exceedingly slippery and generally unsafe...as I found to my cost.'' He added that ""a long and heavy'' late June snowstorm interrupted his observations of the breeding of these delicate birds. Until then as elusive as Lewis Carroll's snark, the Ross's gull had finally been tracked down by naturalist explorers.