Unusual visitor wings its way in to meet the native gulls

A STRANGE gull has taken up residence in the centre of Dublin. I have not seen the celebrity myself but Eric Dempsey, who runs the Birds of Ireland News Service (BINS) and is an authority on rare birds, has been keeping tabs on the visitor.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Mooney show, he described it as a medium-sized bird, “coffee coloured with white wings”. It hangs around the pond in St Stephen’s Green, where it fraternises with the ducks and native black-headed gulls, and has also visited the Financial Services Centre on the Liffey quays. Telling vagrant gulls apart is a task for experts like Eric, who has identified the foreigner as a young Iceland gull. Unlike our native gulls, with their black wing-tips, the Iceland gull has no black on the wings. This is its most obvious distinguishing feature.

Feathers are made of keratin, fingernail material, which is quite soft. The long ones of the outer wings are the bird equivalent of fingers. The tips constantly brush against objects, causing them to become frayed and worn. In the case of gulls, the rough rocky places they frequent make wear a constant problem. A coating of the black pigment melanin strengthens the feathers and renders them much more durable and so most gulls have black wing-tips. If you live in the Arctic, however, black patches on any part of the body make you conspicuous against a background of snow and ice. Dark wing-tips are easily spotted by predators, such as sea eagles. So serious is the danger that the gulls of Arctic regions are white all over.