One fall some years ago I stood on the Grand Marais harbor shore behind the Angry Trout Cafe and listened to two friends debate the identity of a gull.
Was it an Iceland gull or a Thayer's gull, clues subtle and eventually irrelevant because those two species and a third, Kumlien's gull, were combined — lumped in birder-speak — into a single species, Iceland.
It was a discussion only a lover of gulls would understand. In that case, please welcome Marianne Taylor, enamored of gulls, author of a new book, "The Gull Next Door." (Princeton University Press, hardcover, 192 pages, illustrated with pen and ink drawings, $24.95.)
There are about 50 species of gulls in the world, an uncertain number because of lumping and splitting, gull identities fluid. North America, according to an American Birding Association checklist, has or has been visited by 28 species. Minnesota counts 18.
Taylor, a resident of Great Britain, grew up with gulls nesting on the roof of her home. She has written what I consider the best book on gulls I have read. (I've read this one twice.)
This is not an identification book, and it's probably unfair to the dozens in that category to lump (sorry) it with hers, which is an edification book.
Taylor tells stories, working basic gull information, including identification, into those stories. She is a good storyteller, her bright personality evident. She gives gulls personality, too, making them much more interesting.
In Minnesota we are most likely to see ring-billed and herring gulls, the former evident in the Twin Cities, the latter more so in Duluth and north along the Lake Superior shore. Both species nest there, the ring-bills we see locally most likely young birds, non-breeders.
