Our 2021 field season for gull work has wrapped up!
The Thorne Lab has been collecting data on herring gull foraging movements and ecology in relation to urban areas since 2016 and great black-backed gulls since 2019. This season we continued to study gulls at Young’s Island in Stony Brook, and had our first pilot season conducting fieldwork at Muskeget Island, a remote island off the coast of Nantucket. While Stony Brook is an extremely interesting area due to its proximity to both urban and marine habitats (allowing gulls to feed on human refuse as well as marine items like fish and crabs), it is also important to understand gull movements and diets in more remote settings. By comparing movements from Stony Brook and Muskeget, we can better understand how urban areas influence gull foraging movements and diets during the breeding season. We continue to ask the questions: What environmental pressures might drive urban foraging? How does urban feeding relate to trophic dynamics? What does this mean for energetic expenditure and overall health?
Additionally, we deployed long-term solar-powered GPS units on gulls from both the north and south shore of Long Island in effort to better understand gull movements outside of the breeding season. So far, some of our gulls have migrated south post-breeding (one gull has gone down as far as Virginia!) while others are still hanging around Long Island. We are extremely excited to begin analyzing this data and share what our birds are up to!
Dr. Thorne and PhD student Kim attached a solar-powered GPS unit to a great black-backed gull
A herring gull from Young’s Island, Stony Brook, moves into the NYC area post-breeding