can we keep it, pa?
A rare bird was spotted at nearby West Point Lake (Georgia) this week, just a mile or so from where I live. Usually a bird of the Arctic and Canada's maritime provinces, this Ivory Gull is the first ever in Georgia and the first sighting in the south in over a decade. Hundreds of people have flocked to see it.

Suspected to be an adventurous teen (in bird years), the gull delights camera-snapping bird-watchers simply by hanging around in plain sight, flying overhead and then settling on the water. Today comes word that the bird is lethargic and appears to have a broken wing, and everybody wonders what is to be done more than they wonder how and when the injury happened. Some people wonder what the bird eats, and if it is able to find proper food at the lake.

Should the gull be captured? Should it be rehabilitated, relocated, and released?

It's a story straight out of The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (see Chapter 5, "After the Storm"). Charles Ingalls finds an unusual bird - described as looking like a little auk (possibly a dovekie) - on a solitary romp around Silver Lake. Pa doesn't have the internet, a cell phone, or a newspaper to spread the word about his find, and nobody is around to flock to the lake to take pictures, so he puts the bird in his pocket and takes it home as a novelty to show his family. There's a debate about what to do because the bird won't eat, and finally Pa and the girls return the bird to the lake and release it.

The West Point Lake bird story is still unfolding.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:11 PM