Nature Blog - Prompt Entry #4

Someone once asked me why there are seagulls in Utah. The question absolutely baffled me. Why wouldn't there be? Whoever I was talking to pointed out that they are SEA-gulls, sea birds, and Utah was almost a thousand miles inland. My mind struggled to comprehend a question I had never considered before. Why are there seagulls in Utah? Because....there are. I had never wondered about the birds that flocked menacingly at parks, eyeing the food and scraps of picnickers. The white and gray birds were everywhere, their raspy cries background noise to walks around the neighborhood, trips to the movie theaters, recess during elementary school. They were like the robins and sparrows that nested in my neighbor's pine tree. Why are there seagulls in Utah? Why shouldn't there be?

In fact, the California Gull is the state bird of Utah. It was made official by state legislation in 1955, but the bird had been a part of Utah's history since 1848. The Mormon pioneers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July of 1847. Without delay, they hurried to plant crops and make the most of what was left of the growing season so that the next year, they would have enough food to support themselves. The next summer, however, their fields and crops were being devoured by a plague of Rocky Mountain crickets. Without the harvest of those crops, the pioneers would starve through the winter, and all hope seemed lost when in swooped flocks and flocks of seagulls to save the day. To those pioneers, it was a miracle from God. According to accounts, the birds feasted until full then disgorged and continued feasting on the crickets for several days "until the pests were vanquished and the people were saved." (Orson F. Whitney, http://pioneer.utah.gov/research/utah_symbols/bird.html) It became known as the Miracle of the Gulls. The Sea Gull Monument in downtown Salt Lake City commemorates that event, and I'm sure that naming the California Seagull as the state bird was also a direct result of that story.

Though that bit of folklore could be taken as the reason for the gulls' presence in Utah, it doesn't explain how seabirds are able to thrive in a land-locked state. True, the Great Salt Lake could act a mini-ocean, though it is much saltier than the oceans are because it doesn't have an outlet. As it turns out, California Gulls live and breed in lakes and marshes across the western United States. They migrate to the Pacific Coast every winter, but they don't need coastal climates or locations in order to survive. They eat insects and fish, but are also scavengers who forage at dumps and docks. This is the capacity in which we know the best here in Utah, and explains why they are so numerous at parks, schools, and parking lots.

It seems strange to me that a scavenger bird, often classified as a pest, would be the state bird of Utah, whose symbol is the beehive (for hardwork) and whose people are clean-living, frugal, and conservative. Yet when I close my eyes and listen to the wailing calls of the circling gulls, I can't help but remember what it is like to be far away from home. I remember what it is like to be divided between two places, two halves of myself planted in different landscapes. Year after year, the birds return to their ocean, home for a few months at least. Then back to the world of nesting and breeding and foraging and surviving. Many of those early Mormon pioneers came from the British Isles, and though they came willingly for their religion's sake, I'm sure they missed the sigh of the ocean, the salt of the air, the green of the hills when they heard the cry of Utah's California Gulls. They are scavengers, yes, but maybe they are also reminders of what is beyond, calling us back to where we have been, urging us forward to new adventures and heights.