Sent: Friday, February 18, 2022 4:57 PM
To: Maine birds <maine-birds@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Maine-birds] Common(Common/Kamchatka) Gull, Eastport, 2/17
Congratulations to Allison and Cameron on finding the Common Gull. Chris Bartlett photographed a Common Gull (identified as European) February 2018 at Eastport. That is the most recent "Mew Gull" seen in Maine. There are two other accepted Common Gull records: December 2008 and May 2000. Some reports not assignable and remain as Common/Short-billed Gull. There are three records of what probably involve two individuals of Short-billed Gull: August 2013, and then winter 2016-17 and presumed returning January-February 2017. These are listed by group on the Maine Bird Records Committee website under Mew Gull.
Needless to say, Common Gull is a review species in Maine, and I look forward to seeing the photos and descriptions of the bird. Becky Marvil is the committee secretary and the best person to whom these should be sent. A Kamchatka Gull would be a new subspecies for Maine, if this bird proves to be that taxon.
The long of the Short-billed of it:
Short-billed Gull is a direct translation of the scientific name, brachyrhynchus ('brachy' means short and 'rhynchus' means bill, both from Greek). Short-billed Gull is the name of the bird that I grew up knowing on the Pacific coast, and the name used in my favorite field guide by Ralph Hoffmann, "Birds of the Pacific States." When John Richardson first described brachyrhynchus in 1831, he called the new species "Short-billed Mew-Gull" (see page 422 here: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41549859). The group name mew-gull, is an important clue. It linked the new bird to the Old World birds known as mew gulls.
Names of birds are part of our cultural heritage. This has been lost in some modern-day rebranding field guides. I'll admit that Short-billed Gull is not as pretty a name as Mew Gull. But since Mew Gull was the former species name for the combined Common Gull and Short-billed Gull, we need to use an established older name for the newly recognized components, both having fairly wide ranges. Under the species account for the formerly combined Mew Gull, the American Ornithologists' Union gave the group name "Mew Gull" to the European birds now called Common Gull (7th edition of the AOU checklist, 1998). You can read the breakdown yourself under "Notes" on page 188 here (https://americanornithology.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/AOSChecklistGall-Charad.pdf). At least a couple of gull guides published in the 2000s misread this, and ascribed Mew Gull as a name solely used for the North American bird. That clearly was not so and historically inaccurate. Nevertheless, this rebranded version has been adopted by many.
The English name Mew Gull goes way back in European usage for what we now call Common Gull. In fact, Mew Gull was used in the Old World before the description of brachyrhynchus! Mew stems from an old name for some smaller gulls and kittiwakes, then known as sea-mews. The naturalist John Ray used this name in 1713, for example (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41056316). The name Common Gull goes way back too, for example John Selby's "Illustrations of British Ornithology" published in 1833. There, Selby gives the "provincial" name for Larus canus as sea-mall or sea-mew (page 490: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/30119054).
Use of the name "Mew Gull" for what we now call Common Gull, apart from Short-billed Gull, was long used in North America. That was the approach published in Eliot Coues's key "Revision of the gulls of North America" (1862, page 302): "b. Smaller; bill less robust; angle less prominent; legs dusky bluish green. "Mew Gulls." (including L. canus, the type of Linnaeus' Larus.) [https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/26361274]
This wasn't new to Coues. In 1834, Thomas Nuttall referred to these gulls as: "Common Gull, or Mew," "Ring-billed Mew Gull," and "Short-billed Mew Gull" (pages 299-301 in "A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada" https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/5888910).
In the popular and well-used Bent series on the natural history of North American birds, Charles Townsend wrote an account for the "Mew Gull," specifically referring to the Eurasian birds we now call Common Gull (Bent 1921, see page 146: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo1.ark:/13960/t3tt5tj29?urlappend=%3Bseq=216). The entry for our North American birds was under "Short-billed Gull" on page 140 in that same book (scroll up).
Robert Ridgway's landmark series, "The Birds of North and Middle America" ascribed the name "Mew Gull" to the Old World Common Gull, and he regarded those as distinct from Short-billed Gull (volume 8, 1919):
Mew Gull -- https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/37748013
Short-billed Gull --https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/37748018
One of the most important worldwide works on gulls is that by Jonathan Dwight published in 1925, "The gulls (Laridae) of the world: their plumages, moults, variations, relationships and distribution." On page 173, one will read the three groups we are talking about:
Common Gull; Mew for Larus canus canus, Asiatic Common Gull for what is now called Kamchatka Gull, Short-billed Common Gull for, you guessed it. One may download a pdf of this once scarce resource here: https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/1245
The best way to think of these gulls is as a group: Mew Gulls. That is the least confusing use. Then the component species are Common Gull, Short-billed Gull, and if split, Kamchatka Gull.
Louis Bevier
Fairfield
Chair, Maine Bird Records Committee
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