Rare Siberian gull was seen in Indiana and Chicago

If the Chicago area felt like Siberia in the past week, maybe you should blame a recent visitor from that frigid region.

Or maybe he knew something about the coming weather, and was just checking things out.

According to the annual Christmas Bird Count, a program of the National Audubon Society, a slaty-backed gull, which normally lives in Siberia and winters in Japan, showed up recently, first in Indiana and then in Chicago's Calumet Park. The sightings of the rare gull created great excitement among Illinois and Indiana birders.

Marshall Iliff, an ornithologist from Cornell University, tells the (Tinley Park) SouthtownStar the slaty-backed gull is fairly rare in North America, except for Alaska, but sightings have increased in recent years.

No one seems to know why.