Lost and Found: The Labrador Duck

Sculpture in Brand Park

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

There’s a story in my family that once I was trying to tell them about a duck I’d seen and after denying their many suggestions, I blurted out in frustration, “it was a special duck!” which of course made no sense. Located in Brand Park near the banks of the Chemung River there is a real special duck, or at least a statue of one recognizing the Labrador Duck. The statue is part of the Lost Bird Project, and is located at what is thought to be the last known place in the world where this special duck was seen alive in 1878.

Audubon's painting of Labrador Ducks

The five hundred and forty pound bronze statue of a stylized Labrador Duck was sculpted by artist Todd McGrain, while he was an artist-in-residence at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. The statue was installed in May of 2009, and is the first in a five bird project highlighting North American birds that have gone extinct. The sculpture was privately funded and a gift to the people of Elmira. McGrain completed the duck and went on to design and install four other birds throughout the continent. They are the Great Auk in Newfoundland, Canada; the Heath Hen in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; the Carolina Parakeet in Okeechobee, Florida; and the Passenger Pigeon in Columbus, Ohio. Copies of the sculptures have traveled and been exhibited in various museums throughout the US. In 2010 a 63-minute documentary was made about the project and in the fall of 2014, McGrain wrote a book based on this work. 

McGrain has been a sculptor for over 25 years. He has received numerous grants and awards and exhibited widely. His interest in connecting his artwork to environmental issues has grown and evolved to include documentary film work. Currently McGrain is documenting conditions of the Forest Elephants of Central Africa, and involved in a data collection company monitoring ocean climates.

In various interviews about the Lost Bird Project McGrain talks about the importance of memorializing and bringing awareness to birds now lost, saying that “forgetting is another form of extinction.” 

Sadly over 190 known species of birds have gone extinct, and more than 100 of these just in the last century.

The local story of the Labrador Duck’s Elmira demise has been retold in newspapers as far back as 1879 and repeated as recently as 2015. It involves pharmacist, doctor, and scientific investigator Dr. William H. Gregg identifying the remaining head and neck of a duck shot and eaten by a hungry family.

Digging into the Labrador Duck’s extinction story reveals some interesting contradictions. Its name comes from the east coast where it lived along the seashore, and its diet consisted of shellfish. 

Red indicates considered habitat where the ducks lived 

The duck had black and white feathers, and was prized for its eggs and plumage. It has also been called a skunk duck because of its coloring. It was hunted for food though its meat was considered bad tasting and reportedly spoiled quickly. Alexander Wilson, a naturalist in the early 1800s described the species as scarce and located along the coasts, and “never met with on fresh water lakes or rivers.” The only nests associated with the species were identified near Quebec and pointed out to John Woodhouse Audubon, son of the famous ornithologist, as belonging to the pied duck. However the same term was also used for the surf scoter and common goldeneye. The Labrador Duck is considered to be the first species of North American birds to go extinct in modern times. If indeed the unlucky duck actually found its way to Elmira, any ability to thrive seems questionable.

Author Kelli L. Huggins adds further questions about the mythic story by picking apart the principal characters associated with the so-called discovery in her book (available online) Curiosities of Elmira: The Last Labrador Duck, Professor Smokeball, the Great Female Crime Spree and More published by The History Press in 2017.

We can verify the Labrador Duck is no more and seems to carry the distinction of being the first North American bird to go extinct in recorded US history. Whether it came about through the elaborate and somewhat sketchy version of arriving in Chemung County, being shot for food, and finally eaten by a lad from Elmira in 1878 or whether it disappeared due to other reasons is not so clear.

The specialness of Todd McGrain’s work may not be based on an actual event that happened December 12, 1878. It does bring an awareness to species extinction by using art and ornithological history to remind us not to forget. Public art can have a powerful impact on communities, helping us to remember.

To discover more local history, check out our gift shop both in person or online!

Bird Brains: Gulls on the Chemung River

by Erin Doane, Curator

In 2009, ring-billed gulls were the scourge of downtown Elmira. The nearly 800 nesting pairs that called the small island between the Main Street and Clemens Center Parkway bridges home did not stay on the river. They flew over shops and restaurants, landed on roofs and stoops, wandered parking lots, and left their calling cards everywhere they went. Business owners and residents demanded that the city do something about the gull invasion. The birds had been coming to Elmira for over 100 years with no trouble. Why was 2009 different? 

Ring-billed gull, from Wikimedia.com

The Chemung River has not always been the nesting grounds for hundreds of gulls. In 1893, they were such a rare sight in the area that when one was shot by a boy while he was out hunting, it was big enough news to make it into the Star-Gazette. In February 1904, the newspaper ran another story when a flock of gulls came to Elmira. They were still seen near the river in March and a local reporter was pleased that no one had shot any while they were visiting.

By the 1910s, gulls were a regular, seasonal sight in Elmira. They would come back to their old haunts in early winter. If they were late, locals would grow concerned, and would then heave a sigh of relief when their feathered friend finally arrived. Pedestrians on the bridges would stop to watch the birds “describing graceful circles in the air or floating, peacefully down the river with the current.” It appeared that most residents and business owners in downtown were quite fond of the gull’s annual visits.

An amusing article from the Star-Gazette about negotiating to keep the birds in Elmira, March 21, 1910

The gulls were typically just daytime visitors to Elmira. They spent the night in Watkins Glen and flew down to the Chemung River every day to find food. When the river froze over, locals became concerned that the gulls may starve, so they threw food scraps out onto the ice for the birds. During World War I, the gulls were treated particularly well because it was thought that they could be used to detect submarines during their season at sea. The birds followed the trails of refuse dumped by the submersibles. Elmirans were encouraged to continue feeding the gulls during their short stay on the Chemung River “for every little bit helps when the nation is trying hard to win the war.”

The gulls were considered harbingers of winter. It was thought that when the birds arrived, cold weather was right behind them. Their late arrival predicted a mild winter, and their absence for a season was a sign of an early spring. The number of birds that arrived was also seen as an indicator of how harsh the season would be. If large numbers of birds showed up, then it was going to be a particularly severe winter. In 1931, very few gulls visited Elmira and it was “almost unprecedentedly mild.”

After the 1930s, reports of the gulls’ seasonal visits to the Chemung River stopped appearing in the local newspaper. They were likely such a common sight by then that their arrival was no longer considered news. It wasn’t until the new millennium that the birds again became newsworthy. In the early 2000s, some dredging was done in the river. As a result, a small island, roughly 100 yards long made of dirt and stone, was left in the river between the Main Street and Clemens Center Parkway bridges. The gulls found it a perfect place to nest. Within a few years Gull Island, as it was dubbed, was home to one of the most accessible ring-billed gull breeding colonies in the Northeast. Birders flocked to the area to get an up-close look at the birds as they nested then raised their young in the middle of the city.

Portrait of a ring-billed gull, from Wikimedia.org

Many locals and visitors were still quite fond of the gulls as their short winter visits became long summer stays. Gull Island was mentioned when the American Institute of Architects was working to recognize “hidden gems” in the area in 2006. The island also showed up on lists of reasons why Elmira was a great place to live in 2005 and 2007. Unfortunately, that many birds in one place also created a huge nuisance. The scavengers were drawn into downtown by food sources. They had the potential to carry diseases and were not shy about leaving droppings whenever and wherever the urge came upon them. By 2009, the frustrations of downtown businesses and residents had come to a head and they demanded that the city do something about the gulls.

Many suggestions were presented for ways to get rid of, or at least lessen, the gull population on the river. Some suggested playing sounds of fireworks to scare them away. Others proposed moving the island on which they nested farther down the river to a more wooded area. Those who suggested killing the birds or destroying the eggs were quickly shot down, however. Ring-billed gulls are designated a protected species by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In September 2009, the city approved a $4,160, three-year contract with the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Wildlife Services for the removal of gull nests and eggs from the island. Those efforts helped to some extent, but gulls tend to return to the same nesting site year after year.

In 2011, the Elmira City Council adopted an innovative new way to deal with the birds. Sammi, a 7-year-old female Border Collie, donated by Elmira Animal Control Director Craig Spencer, went to work harassing the gulls into leaving. The plan to use Sammi for bird control was such a novel idea that the story was picked up by newspapers throughout the country. Sammi’s exploits appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Northwest Herald (Woodstock, Illinois), Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, Iowa), The Burlington Free Press (Burlington, Vermont), Wisconsin State Journal (Madison Wisconsin), Daily News (New York, New York), The Signal (Santa Clarita, California), and Kenosha News (Kenosha, Wisconsin).

Ring-billed gull in Elmira, April 2020

Today, ring-billed gulls can still be spotted on the Chemung River, but there are not nearly as many as there were 10 years ago.