Home for Wayward Gulls

If it’s true that birds of a feather usually flock together, nobody told Russ and Mildred. These two baby gulls had to be different.

Instead of hatching on a remote island or rugged seaside cliff, as gulls are wont to do, the gull chicks were born in a cactus planter--on a private dock, near crowded Balboa Pier, right outside William and June House’s living room.

“This is the first breeding record of the Western gull in Orange County,” said Sylvia Gallagher, a National Audubon Society member for almost 20 years and director of the Orange County Breeding Bird Atlas.

“The closest they normally breed is on the Channel Islands. I didn’t believe it until I saw them.”

The Houses’ two-story home on Balboa Peninsula isn’t exactly Santa Catalina Island. But for a mother bird in a pinch, it apparently was good enough. Chirping contentedly and closely guarded by their parents, the two fluffy gray-and-white chicks, now about 2 weeks old, seem unruffled by their waterfront home, with its panoramic view of the sun-drenched bay and fleets of colorful yachts.

“I thought my claim to fame would be my husband’s ear surgery. Not a bird,” said June House, whose husband is a local ear surgeon.

House didn’t know her visiting chicks, which resemble ducklings, were unusual until one toppled out of the nest and she called the National Audubon Society for help.

“This woman called me and said a baby sea gull had fallen out of its nest onto her deck and she wondered what to do,” Gallagher said. “I said, ‘Hey, it can’t be a sea gull. Gulls don’t nest around here.’ But she insisted it was. She said she knew a sea gull when she saw one. She was quite offended. So I decided to toddle on down there, and she was right. It really was a gull.”

The baby gulls are the first to be recorded in Orange County and the first seen on the Southern California mainland between Point Loma and Point Conception since 1935, when a pair was spotted in La Jolla, Gallagher said. The Western gull is the most common sea gull found in Southern California.

“Since this area was settled, they haven’t nested here,” Gallagher said. “They are colonial birds, and there isn’t room for a colony here.”

The gulls’ new home is perched on some of the highest-priced real estate in Southern California. Most people, like the Houses, who have owned their bay shore retreat for 27 years, would call it their dream home.

But for sea gulls, the first choice of residency is an isolated, rugged coastline, not jam-packed Balboa, with a backdrop of the towering high-rises of Newport Center. The peninsula gets so crowded that the summer motto among residents is “Bike it or boot it, but leave the car at home.”

Kimball Garrett, author of a widely used Southern California birding handbook, said the sea birds usually hatch on the Channel Islands and the remote seaside cliffs around San Luis Obispo, with some occasionally found nesting near Point Loma in San Diego County.

“Sea birds have very little defense against mammalian predators, so any bird that nests on the ground in these heavily populated beach areas won’t do very well,” said Garrett, who is ornithology collection manager at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. “They are normally island nesters.”

Perhaps California is becoming so overpopulated with gulls that they are being crowded out of their usual breeding areas, he said.

“I’m not surprised that there are Western gulls out there looking for overflow nest sites,” Garrett said.

Audubon experts said they don’t know why the breeding pair chose the Houses’ planter. But so far, the chicks, already about six inches long, are safe and healthy.