The 22nd Annual Gull Frolic took place on Saturday, February 17, 2024. It began at the reasonable hour of 9:30 AM which was good for me as it takes me an hour and a half to get to Winthrop Harbor, IL, close to the Wisconsin border. It was sunny, bright and cold. One expects to be colder by the lakefront anyway. Usually, colder weather can mean more gulls, especially if the cold has been around long enough to create ice on the lake, but this year the cold had only begun a couple days before.

A little note here about climate change: I just read in a report of the City of Chicago’s recent filing of a lawsuit against petroleum producers for lying about climate change and the resulting damages, there was mention of lake ice in steady decline for years as overall temperature warms. So a short cold spell would not produce enough ice to bring the gulls in to shore off the lake. Of course the lack of lake ice in the winter also impacts plenty of other things besides the Gull Frolic.

So there were gulls, but not many unusual ones. I would estimate 95% Herring Gulls, maybe 3% Ring-billed Gulls and the rest an occasional Iceland/Thayer’s. Before I got there someone had seen a Glaucous Gull, but although we kept looking, it never returned. I think I saw a Lesser Black-backed Gull briefly, early on, but I did not get a respectable photo of it. After I left around 2:30 PM, a California Gull made a brief appearance.

Usually we can look forward to seeing some waterfowl, but only a few species appeared and they were almost too distant to photograph. Even the Canada Geese didn’t bother to show up.

Of course none of this stopped me from taking too many pictures. I mean, the gulls are just fun to watch.

I found Ring-billed Gulls in a few photos. There are Ring-billed and Herring Gulls in the gallery below for comparison. In this case it was easy to tell them apart by their feet. Ring-billeds have yellow feet and Herring Gulls have pink feet.

More Ring-billed and Herring Gulls.

Picking out Iceland Gulls and some Iceland/Thayer’s Gulls is a bit more challenging. Not to mention first cycle, second cycle and adult plumages, breeding and non-breeding…

As far as I’m concerned, more Iceland Gulls and Thayer’s Gulls confusion. I’m not much good at this anymore.

Ring-billed, Herring and Iceland Gulls.

After a while, it was just Gulls, Gulls, Gulls…

Perhaps as I tired of trying to find different gulls, I decided to take a photo of the moon, and then barely caught a gull flying past it.

Of course the compelling reason for all this is to see some friends I haven’t seen in a long time, some as far back as the last Gull Frolic.

As I finish writing this post, we have just come off two extremely warm days reaching highs of 70 degrees Fahrenheit or more, threat of tornados last night which resulted mainly in a brief showering of hail banging against the windows as the cold front moved in. We are back in the 20’s this morning with winds at 21 miles per hour. I did not go for a walk this morning as it started out too cloudy and windy (!), but I will go swimming, practice piano, serve the indoor birds their Evening Snack and get ready for an early dinner with friends before choir rehearsal. Then it will be good to get caught up with more local excitement, like the moon in the west early Sunday morning.