Floridian: Stranger on the shore

Stranger on the shore

No wonder ardent birders call Glenn Wilson a hero. Not many observers get to spot a bird that's visiting a Florida beach thousands of miles beyond its usual haunts.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG

Glenn Wilson's beat is the beach. A special deputy with the Pinellas Sheriff's Department, he patrols Fort DeSoto Park, where he watches mullet jump and hones his budding skills as a birdwatcher.

In October, he was driving his Jeep on the beach when he passed a shorebird convention near the surf. The flock included laughing gulls, oystercatchers and assorted terns.

He also saw an odd gull, the color of a chocolate kiss.

He stopped at the park office and borrowed a camera. Back on the beach he snapped a photo of the strange visitor. A few days later, birders throughout eastern America started hailing him as "The Hero."

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Lyn Atherton lives at Tierra Verde because it's the closest residential community to Fort DeSoto, where Tampa Bay tickles the Gulf of Mexico. In her opinion, Fort DeSoto is one of the best spots to look for birds in the entire world.

She visits the park every day, walking the mangroves and scouring the mulberry trees. When she spots something unusual -- say a hooded warbler or scissors-tailed flycatcher -- she puts the word out on the Internet.

A few days after deputy Wilson got his photograph of the chocolate gull, Atherton dropped by the park office to ask if anyone had seen any unusual birds.

No.

But as she was leaving somebody said, "Hey, take a look at these photos."

Deputy Wilson's photos weren't the clearest Atherton had ever seen. But the bird he'd photographed looked like something she'd seen in a book.

She put her suspicions out over the Internet. The next day Tampa's Ken Allen, another guy passionate about things with feathers, headed for the park.

Atherton's cell phone rang within minutes.

"Lyn, get over here now!" Allen shouted. "We've got ourselves a Heermann's gull."

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It's not that a Heermann's gull is rare; they're plentiful. It's just that you never find one here. They are found about 3,000 miles west.

In their natural habitat, California's Pacific Coast, Heermann's gulls spend much of their lives offshore foraging for food. Landlubbers don't see them often.

When California cools during winter, some Heermann's Gulls head south to Mexico. From time to time a wayward bird shows up as far east as Texas.

Fort DeSoto's Heermann is the first recorded in Florida and only the second recorded east of the Mississippi.

Hundreds of serious birders -- the kind who keep a competitive list of the species they see -- have visited the park to look for the gull. They've come from as far away as Toronto.

"A bird like this is very, very unusual," says Atherton, who is preparing a report for the birding magazine, Florida Field Naturalist. "We were very lucky that Glenn Wilson was out here that day, and that he noticed something unusual. He's a hero."

Millions of birds migrate through Florida during fall and spring. Virtually all are eastern species.

"As a rule, birds do not go east-west or west-east on their migrations," says Ron Smith, a St. Petersburg police officer who is among Florida's best birders. "A few birds wander farther east or west than their normal ranges, but not necessarily for a purpose."

Birds, of course, don't read road maps. Storms can push them to and fro. A bird that flies too high, and gets caught in the high-atmosphere jet stream, might be swept hundreds of miles east.

"The interesting thing about birds is they are unpredictable," Atherton says.

Florida birders still talk about the day four years ago when somebody reported a northern lapwing in a field near Sebring. Birders throughout North America besieged the Central Florida town to admire a species native to Eurasia.

Last fall big-time birders rushed to the Florida Panhandle to see a snowy owl. Usually found on the snow in the Arctic, the white owl was hooting it up on the beach at St. George Island State Park. It was Florida's first record.

The Heermann's gull -- named after the late ornithologist who first described it -- apparently has settled in for the winter.

It hangs out with other gulls at the foot of the fishing pier that juts out into the gulf. When a tourist feeds popcorn to the birds -- against park rules by the way -- the Heermann's gull holds its own.

The gull also preens on the shore at East Beach, the spit of land that points toward the Sunshine Skyway.

Gulls can be hard to identify because their plumage changes according to season. But the Heermann's gull is easier to spot. Unlike other gulls, which are usually white and gray, the visitor is brown from back to belly.

"It really stands out," Atherton says. She photographs the gull at every opportunity.

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Rarely have so many birding experts invaded one small section of Pinellas County. More eyes have meant more unusual birds.

In November, birders looking for the Heermann's Gull found a Lapland longspur, a species usually encountered in the Arctic.

A few weeks later, another Fort DeSoto birder saw a tiny bird dart into the marsh along the park's main road. It was a seaside sparrow, rarely spotted near Tampa Bay. Last week, somebody noticed a strange white bird later identified as an elegant tern, most often seen in western Mexico.

Deputy Glenn Wilson also is keeping his binoculars near.

"I'm not a very good birder," he says. "But I am a trained observer. I notice things that are out of place. That Heermann's gull looked out of place."