You can’t just call them seagulls anymore

I’m a bird watcher; Jan is not, but bit by bit that is changing as my habits rub off on her. She, of course, is still waiting for the day when her neatness habit rubs off on me.

When we are in Savannah we like to walk the winter beach. Mostly devoid of people, the beach allows us a pleasant meander, and I get to watch the birds through binoculars or a scope. A few years ago she pointed at a bird flying past and asked what kind of seagull it was. It seemed different to her, and it was different—it was a tern, not a gull.

I hauled the bird book from the back of my pants and flipped to the page with Forster’s Tern in winter plumage. 

From Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds

I showed her the markings, we looked at other possibilities and she concluded it was indeed a Forster’s Tern. I then flipped to the gull portion of the book and pointed out the differences in wing shape and beaks between terns and gulls. Terns have narrower wings than gulls and their beaks tend to be sharply pointed; gulls’ beaks are often hooked. Relative to their overall size, gulls have longer legs than terns.

The differences relate primarily to feeding. Terns fish for dinner by diving straight into the water and catching fish. Gulls are scavengers (thank you landfills for their geographical expansion) and when they fish they do it in a swooping manner. Sometimes they’ll land on the surface and paddle around like a duck. Gulls, not terns, are the pests who come begging at your picnic.

For a while, that’s where we left it. Jan figured out which birds were gulls and which were terns. Then one day a small gull and large gull were standing together. They were not parent and child, but Herring Gull and Ring-billed Gull. Viewed together their size difference is significant. 

From Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds

Seen separately in winter they do look similar, although Herring Gulls have pinkish legs and Ring-billed Gulls have yellow-green legs. But to know which is which when only one is present, you need to look for the differences or have a good ingrained sense of bird-size. Just as Jan was getting good at distinguishing Herring Gulls from Ring-billed Gulls a third common winter gull in Savannah showed up: the Laughing Gull.

As Jan continued to watch she realized that not only did terns behave differently than gulls, but each of the gull species had different behavioral characteristics as well. That’s when she commented that, “You can’t just call them seagulls anymore.”

For me, that realization is where the fun really starts. Until that discovery, naming a bird is more akin to attaching a label to something to gain mastery over it, a habit in which we homo sapiens excel. Afterward recognizing individual differences, the birds become friends. Oh yes, you remember, the Herring Gulls often stand farther away from the surf than Laughing Gulls and you can get nearer to them before they frighten. You can watch for hours the way Forester Terns fold their wings just so before diving.

When you read a story and it talks about a flock of seagulls, you want to know what kind because you are unwilling to settle for just calling them seagulls anymore. And if a writer describes a sleek bird with pointy wings and beak diving into the water as a seagull and not a tern, you immediately lose respect for the writing—even if it has no effect on the story and a tern would have done just as well as a seagull.

I like nature and so tend to feature it in my writing. I only include animals I have observed myself because unlike characters, I can’t invent them out of whole cloth. This fanaticism on my part will limit the geography of my stories, but I’m comfortable with the tradeoff – and did I mention I’m planning a futuristic novel where I’ll have no constraints.

Question for you: Does it bother you when writers get something wrong, and if so, what bothers you the most?

~ Jim