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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Environment - "Gulls of another color seen in NW Ind."

The Indianapolis Star picked up an AP story this morning that reports:

PORTAGE, Ind. -- Some gulls around northwestern Indiana have been looking a little blue the past week, and the state Department of Natural Resources is trying to figure out why.

Josh McClellan and his mom, Debbie, saw a gull with a blue head at a baseball field in Portage on Saturday.
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"We saw it up close because people were feeding the birds on the ground at the field," Debbie McClellan said.

DNR public information officer Gene Davis said the agency's Lake County office had five or six calls on pink and blue gull sightings in the Hammond area. Davis said he called DNR district biologists Monday.

DNR conservation officer Aaron Mullet said the agency did not know what caused the discoloration, which has been spotted among the gulls in Lake and Porter counties along Lake Michigan.

The ILB can solve the mystery -- the answer was in yesterday's Chesterton Tribune, in a story by Kevin Nevers:
The blue-bellied Ring-billed Gulls observed over the last week or so in Northwest Indiana haven’t been paint-balled. They haven’t fallen afoul (afowl?) of any toxic waste. They haven’t been abused in any way, as the Post-Tribune speculated in a story published in this morning’s edition and headlined “Blue tint baffles experts.”

Instead, the gulls have been dyed as part of a long-term management program implemented by the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services.

According to a statement released on May 8 by Chicago and the Park District, Ring-billed Gulls in two colonies—in Chicago and East Chicago—are being marked with various shades of non-toxic dye in an effort to determine their origin and “to aid in the development of long-term management strategies.” * * *

As for the dyed gulls, the region’s birding community has been asked to report sightings of color-marked birds to track their movements and migratory patterns.

The Chesterton Tribune has received reports of blue-dyed gulls in Prairie Meadow Park in Westville, at the INDOT drainage basin at the intersection of U.S. Highway 6 and McCool Road in Portage, and at Miller Beach in Gary.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 21, 2008 09:39 AM
Posted to Environment