I'm sure that to some people, gulls are boring, everyday birds that are annoying scavengers. At home, you'll see them congregating at landfills and any place where garbage and food are littered onto the streets. I find them to be beautiful, regardless of their behaviour. Often when I photograph them, I feel like they don't look real. They have the same kind of smooth feathers that waxwings have, so sleek it looks more like velvet than it does feathers. The California gulls at home are huge, but the great black-backed gull could certain give it a run for its money. According to Wikipedia, this is actually the largest gull in the world. I believe it, too! I've seen young ones in 1st and 2nd winter plumage flying overhead and initially mistaking them for birds of prey until I noticed the wing shape. Birds that large can certainly soar, and they seem to do so at times. I find them to be quite impressive. I live quite close to the Thames, so there are ample places to view and photograph gulls when the tide is low. They are really fun to watch, and I had wondered what they do on the shore, but it turns out they can eat little shellfish that live within the river ecosystem, so it's neat to see them catch and shell little clams. That's about all I can see them doing as I haven't been able to get a close-up view of what else they might be eating from the river. They do seem to catch perhaps little fish when boats are going by. I had noticed that sometimes when there is boat generating a lot of splash with motor running, they seem to flock around the back of the boat and pop down into the water to eat whatever the boat seems to be turning up from the water. I had never seen anything like it, but then I've also never lived near water before.
About winter plumages, I learned that the gull's winter plumage is less about mating, like it tends to be in other bird species, than it does with maturity. Not all birds that are born in the spring develop their adult colours by the end of summer. Some birds take 3-4 years to do so. Eagles are such a bird, and as it turns out, so are gulls. The black-backed gull will have certain colours its first winter, slightly different the second winter, and then by the 3rd winter, it will have developed its adult colours. I was told that the California gulls take 4 years to develop their adult colours. I don't know if I got any of the great black-backed gull in winter plumage--they are quite similar to the herring gull, which I'll be posting, and so far any photo that I thought might be one has turned out to be a herring gull in winter plumage.
24/05/2022
I went to Skomer Island this past weekend and spotted a number of great black-backed gulls. They are huge creatures, the largest gull in the UK. I learned, though, that they are quite a bit more vicious than I realised. All over the island, along the path you have to stick to, we were seeing the carcasses of some bird, but with the wings and bones left behind. We couldn't figure out what they were or what was causing it. We happened to pass by a couple of the island's volunteers, so we asked them about it, and it turns out that the great black-backed gulls kill and eat the Manx shearwaters! They said not to get too alarmed, given that there are 700,000 shearwaters and only about 100 of these gulls on the island, so the gulls aren't posing any threat to the population, but it was still a little disconcerting to see so many carcasses lying around that. And that's despite the shearwaters flying mostly by night under the cover of darkness, so imagine if they didn't know to do that, how many dead ones there would be! We also learned that these gulls will try to rob the burrows of eggs as well, but the burrows are built about 3 feet deep, so even though the gulls are huge, they're not big enough to reach the eggs. As I have great black-backed gulls around where I live, they seemed like any other normal gull to me, just snatching food away from other gulls when they get the chance, but now that I know how vicious they are, I think I'll make sure to be careful if I ever get close to one by mistake, just to be on the safe side!
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