Subject: Ross's Gull (fwd)
Date: Dec 9 01:17:28 1994
From: Byron K. Butler - BBUTLER at yalevm.ycc.yale.edu


From: Byron K. Butler, Guilford, CT

Today I went to the Yale Peabody Museum bird collection to study
differences in head shape between Ross's Gull and the two Larus Gull
species (Bonaparte's and Little) I saw in Montreal on Dec. 6th.
Since we have no Ross's Gull skulls in the osteology collection, I
had to settle for comparisons of skins. By happy accident, when I got to
the bird room I ran in to Ray Schwartz who, with Dennis Varza, found the
1984 Connecticut Ross's Gull at the mouth of Oyster River. Ray was there
to study Western Marsh Harrier skins should that bird be relocated. This
gave Ray and me the opportunity to compare notes on Ross's Gull. I
explained to him the difference in eye position and head shape I noticed
in these gulls. Ray shared with me Dennis' observation that the distance
from the eye to the base of the bill is about equal to the length of the
bill in Ross's Gull, while it is much less in the other gulls. Below I
make an attempt to show these differences with "character-string art" (a
term I just now made up!). Since I'm new at this art form please allow me
some slack -- this is schematic, not to be taken literally. What it shows
is 1) the approximate relationship between bill length and distance from
base of bill to eye, 2) the position of the eye, and 3) the shape of the
head. The two heads are not to the exact same scale due to the limitations
of my character-string art. Also, the head on the left represents both the
Little Gull and Bonaparte's Gull. Note that the forehead of Ross's Gull is
wider (i.e., the distance between the eyes is greater) than that of the
other two gulls. Ross's Gull heads are rounder when looking straight into
the face of the gull, and more spherical in general. Bonaparte's and
Little Gull heads look as if they have been squeezed from the sides, while
Ross's Gull appears as if it has been pushed in from front to back.

The position of Ross's Gull eyes *should* allow it a greater binocular
field. I don't know if it in fact does because I don't know anything about
the structure of its retina. Humans have one retinal fovea per eye. This
is where we see with the greatest acuity. Many birds have two fovea per
eye and may use one pair to see lateral monocular visual fields and the
other to see a binocular field. (This is an oversimplification, other
factors are involved, too.) Daan Sandee is correct in stating that
binocularity per se is no big deal. However, evolution by natural
selection does not reward energy expenditures to maintain unnecessary
differences. That the morphology of Ross's Gull is so different from
Bonaparte's and Little Gulls means there are real biological differences
between these species and I'm suggesting this involves the visual
system, too. The differences in the *degree* of binocularity in these
species may be important.

Please note, so far I haven't *measured* anything, this is all purely
descriptive. Nor have I yet compared the morphology of Ross' Gull to
additional Larus species. If any of you have access to Ross's Gull
skulls and can measure them please let me know.

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Larus spp. Ross' Gull

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Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 04:08:08 EST
From: "Byron K. Butler" <BBUTLER at yalevm.ycc.yale.edu>
Subject: What's in a name?

From: Byron K. Butler, Guilford, CT

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

For some time now I've been studying the history of North American
ornithology. As a result I've become familiar with all of the important
American ornithologists. So, when I went to Montreal to see Ross's Gull
this week it struck me -- who the heck was this guy Ross? I didn't know
anything about him (or is it a her?). I mean... they did name a gull
after him, and even a goose... right? He wasn't among any of the leading
ornithologists I had come to know. Was it H. Ross Perot? Was it John Ross
Ewing? Just who was this fellow Ross? I had to know.

Similar exercises in chasing down the source of a bird's name had
opened many new and interesting areas of learning and understanding
for me. Would this guy Ross take me to new places? Well,... yes!
Actually, there isn't just one Ross, there are three, even a fourth
counting the her, i.e., Lady Ross.

First, there was Sir John Ross of the British Royal navy who searched
for the North-west Passage after the Napoleonic Wars. William Edward
Parry was Ross' second in command. But no bird is named for John Ross.
John Ross took his young nephew, James Clark Ross, with him on his
1818 Arctic expedition. Here the younger Ross established a lifelong
friendship with Edward Sabine after whom Sabine's Gull is named. Edward
Sabine, the astronomer of the expedition, went on to become President
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and of the
Royal Society. Sabine's Gull was so named to honor Edward by his
brother Joseph. Joseph Sabine is remembered in the trinomial of a
subspecies of Ruffed Grouse, Bonasa umbellus sabini. John Ross and
James Clark Ross are noted for having determined the position of the
North Magnetic Pole (later relocated by Roald Amundsen) and it is
James Ross who is commemorated in the name of Ross's Gull. Ross and
another fellow, Sherer, wach shot a specimen of the gull on 23 June
1823, one of which went to Joseph Sabine, the other to Edinburgh
University Museum.
[You can get into the entire history of the search for the North-west
Passage and of arctic Canadian exploration if you wish.]

James Ross was also a friend of John Franklin who we remember with
Franklin's Gull. Franklin, another arctic explorer, became locked in
ice off King William Island in 1846 and died there on 11 June, 1847.
Eventually all 128 of his men were lost, the last of which died along
the shores of Starvation Cove. Franklin's wife, Lady Franklin, sent out
numerous search parties for her husband, the first of which was led by
James Clark Ross. Over four dozen search parties eventually set out to
find Franklin. In the 1980s a team of scientists performed autopsies on
the frozen bodies of three of Franklin's men who had been found buried
on Beechey Island. Franklin, a British officer, had served at Trafalgar
and New Orleans. Earlier, in 1820, Franklin's "British Arctic Land
Expedition" had established Fort Enterprise and suffered from
starvation (eating boiled deer skins and old bones), death, murder,
and cannibalism.

In 1829, Felix Booth, a wealthy gin distiller, outfitted John Ross's
second expedition, with James Clark Ross as second in command. It was
on this expedition in 1831 that James Ross located the Magnetic North
Pole. This expedition, too, became ice-bound and they struggled for
survival for four consecutive winters in the north. They abandoned the
ship and escaped by dragging smaller boats across the ice to Baffin
Bay.

James Ross later spent three seasons exploring the Antarctic, with
the ships Erebus and Terror, for which he was knighted. Joseph Hooker
went along as assistant surgeon and later became one of the most
prominent botanists of the late 19th century. James Ross is also
remembered by the Auckland Island Shore Plover, Thinornis rossi, a
southern hemisphere bird known only from only a single specimen.

William MacGillivray, known for his association with John James Audubon,
is credited with naming Ross's Gull in 1824. His name for it was Ross's
Rosy Gull. However, the famous ornithologist, John Richardson had earlier
named it the Cuneate-tailed Gull but could not publish before
MacGillivray and thus lost his claim to priority for which he was none
too pleased. Audubon and Ross did met each other, probably in London in
the mid-1830s.

James Ross also came back with several species of Yellow-billed Loon
which he believed to be a new species, but Edward Sabine convinced him
that they were just old individuals of the Common Loon and a description
of the Yellow-billed Loon was not published till many years later.

James Ross's wife, Anne, has been honored by no less than the great
John Gould in the African bird, Lady Ross's Turaco (Musophaga rossae).

But what about Ross's Goose and the third Ross? Well, that would be
Bernard Rogan Ross and a whole new story involving the history of the
Hudson's Bay Company and of Samuel Hearne of whom it is said was "a
rugged individual of unusual determination, with no qualms about
existing on deer blood and entrails, flesh and skin boiled in fat,
or buffalo fetuses." Here we revisit John Richardson and meet John
Cassin, Spencer Fullerton Baird, and Robert Kennicott, a founder of
the Chicago Academy of Science, who perished on the banks of the Yukon
at Fort Nulato, Alaska.

*****************************************
The above information was unashamedly plagerized from the following
sources:

Choate, E. A. 1985. The dictionary of American bird names. Rev. ed.
Boston: Harvard Common Press.

Goetzman, W. H. and G. Williams. 1992. The atlas of North American
exploration: from the Norse voyages to the race to the pole. New
York: Prentice Hall General Reference.

Mearns, B. and R. Mearns. 1992. Audubon to Xanthus: the lives of
those commemorated in North American bird names. Orlando, FL:
Academic Press.