Gull will need new winter home after dealership closes

WHEN SATURN of Virginia Beach closes and moves out of its Laskin Road showroom this spring, it will be leaving behind more than memories of a longtime Beach car dealership.

Bert, the ring-billed gull, will no longer have a winter home, said Gary Williamson, a sales consultant at Saturn.

Williamson has been taken with the 5-year-old friendship his service department colleague Ernie Hardy has had with the gull.

Bert, who arrived on the department's windowsill looking for a handout one Saturday in December 2004, has been befriended by Hardy ever since.

"He was pecking on the window, and I went out to feed him," Hardy said, "and he started coming every day.

"I named him Bert because my name was Ernie."

At the time Hardy had recently joined the National Audubon Society, so he was particularly interested in his new friend. He was able to identify the bird as a first year ring-billed gull because of his mottled plumage.

Now a handsome grown- up gray and white with a black tail, Bert lives up to his name with a wide black ring circling his yellow bill. No one knows if Bert really is a male, but the name seems to fit.

Bert is a creature of habit. Every winter, he migrates back to Saturn from summer nesting grounds in Canada. He arrives almost like clockwork to tap on the service department windows.

Instinctively, Hardy knew that Bert would arrive a certain Saturday this December and "when I looked, there he was," Hardy said.

Every day, until he leaves to migrate back in late March, Bert comes to be fed, almost as if for breakfast lunch and dinner.

In between meals he's often perched on the corner of the showroom roof where he fends off other gulls interested in his unique dining arrangements. When he's hungry, Bert flies down to peck at the service department windows to get attention.

"Customers will ask, 'What's that?' " said Hardy. "That's our pet bird. He's hungry."

"He gets really irate when you don't feed him," noted Williamson. "Bert's squawking again!"

"I can tell if he's nearby because we know his voice," said Lisa Horan, who also works in the service department. "You hear his squawk."

Hardy generally feeds pieces of trail bar to Bert, and Horan feeds him trail mix. Whatever the treat, Bert does not like to share. He defends his territory.

"It's Bert's no-fly zone." Williamson said.

They all worry about what will happen next winter when Bert arrives and finds Saturn has closed up shop and moved to Cavalier Mazda in Chesapeake. Hardy hopes that someone else will take up the friendship when he's gone. With Bert's persistence, it's highly likely.

"He has that moxie," Williamson said. "He has that piz azz."

READERS' CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Chesapeake coyotes  Eddie Smith sent a photo taken with a wildlife camera of a coyote in his backfield off Shillelagh Road in Chesapeake. “As you said, we thought it was a dog at first,” Smith wrote.

Ed Wright, who lives in Dallas Woods in Chesapeake, said he thought he also was seeing dogs in his yard until he read the column a couple of weeks ago. And now realizes he’s seeing anywhere from two to four coyotes at night at the edge of his property.

Rare sightings  Nancy Gorry reported seeing a white pelican flying in front of her car on Interstate 264 near Mount Trashmore. In winters past, a white pelican  has been seen spending time in the  lake at Mount Trashmore.

-Vicki Dixon said a yellow-headed blackbird far out of its western range has been  visiting her feeders in Knotts Island. Dixon also said  a painted bunting is back for the third year.

-Tom Beatty saw seven common eiders in the surf south of the Atlantic Wildfowl Heritage Museum at the Oceanfront. These big ducks of the Arctic tundra and the open ocean are seen only rarely along the East Coast in winter.

Sitting on the dock of the bay  Willie Barlow reports that a harbor seal has been hanging out on his dock in Western Branch.

Duck sightings   Robert Brown came across “a flotilla” of sweet little black and white buffleheads swimming from under the fishing pier at the Oceanfront recently.

-William Watson saw hooded mergansers, loons, mallards and gadwalls in the small pond on Shore Drive across from Baylake United Methodist Church.

Photo ops  “This is for all you Hitchcock fans!” wrote Mary Dail when she sent a photo of turkey buzzards gathered on a frozen Linkhorn Bay inlet. “They have been pulling the dead fish out of the ice,” Dail said. “Usually there are close to 30 of the birds. They are still here eating what is floating in the water. They are kind of creepy, but it is better than having rotting fish laying on the banks.”

-David Portis, principal at Rosemont Forest Elementary , took a photo of one of the bald eagles that have been flying around the backfield at the school recently. The  bird was perched in a tree. Portis said perhaps the school’s nickname should be  “the Rosemont Forest Eagles.”

-Reese Lukei sent a great photo of a great horned owl  in his neighbor’s fishpond recently in the Little Neck area:

-Ray Marshall on Miles Standish Road photographed his neighbor’s cat  watching a trio of squirrels through the window  in the recent  cold weather. The squirrels would gather  on the brick windowsill in the sunlight to keep warm, and the inside cat had its own moving picture show to watch:

-Jean Broughton sent a cute photo of a yawning raccoon, its head pillowed on the entrance hole of a large owl-nesting box in her yard at Morgan’s Walke.

-John Wittmann photographed a hawk in his neighbor’s yard in West Neck that had been chasing a small bird that escaped under a gas grill on the patio. The hawk flew to the patio table to look  for more prey, he said.

-Barbara Brown took photos of a male bluebird checking on the birdbox her husband put on their fence in Sajo Farm.

-Robert McCausland sent a lovely photo of a design a leaf miner had burrowed into a leaf at Diamond Spring Park.

-Michelle Gaggiotti photographed an elusive yellow-bellied sapsucker climbing up a tree in her Newcastle yard.

UPLOAD YOUR CLOSE ENCOUNTERS SNAPSHOTS

What surprises or puzzles have you come across in nature, or do you have a tidbit of local lore? Send e-mail to barrow1@cox.net. Include name, neighborhood and city. If you have injured wildlife, call the Virginia Beach SPCA, (757) 427-0070.