Food Fight…by Brad Marks

Greetings everyone! It was a busy weekend at the HQ with all the haunt production activities now in full swing and yesterday we held our 3rd Intrigued Corporate Warbler Watch and Walk in the Woods (IC4W). I won’t say much about the walk as I am pretty sure there will be a story or two coming in the future. It was definitely a great time to be out in the field with the staff and doing what we love to do – shooting feathers (with our cameras, of course) and getting caught up on life, family, injuries, hobbies, endurance sports and definitely some bird knowledge bantered about. Now, some have eluded to this really being their annual birding-acumen assessment as part of their annual performance reviews. Crazy talk, just a fun time with the boss…now let me just grab my clipboard and we’ll be on our way. Going to let Brad take the wheel for today’s post while I finish up all my notes on the assessment forms…sorry, I mean wrap up submitting all the eBird reports from our fun walk.

Take it away Brad…

We are coming up on the end of my third-year writing (almost 100 stories) and photographing for Wildlife Intrigued.  I’ve learned it’s not all about just taking photos.  Oh sure, Jan and I take tens of thousands of photos per year, and sometimes we take that many on a single assignment (22k in Hilton Head in total).  It’s really about observing wildlife and learning to anticipate what might happen next and then telling the story.  Often the whole story happens in just a few moments.  Now, if I can just figure out when the fun stuff is going to happen and take fewer photos of “boring” stuff.  If you’ve figured this out, let me know in the comments.

Jan and I have taken a few trips to South Carolina during cold Illinois winter months.  Like most who travel to the ocean’s edge, we try to ignore the hordes of seagulls.  Although, I learned two years ago that there is more than one type of “seagull”, and that gulls can be quite entertaining (here) if given a chance.  They can also be quite competitive.

Warning, one or more fish were likely harmed in the making of this post, but that’s gonna happen when in proximity to today’s featured feathered friends. Hit the jump to see who wins the “prize”.

Late one afternoon, after visiting a wildlife preserve and taking what ended up being 4-5,000 photos, Jan and I both thought, “We simply haven’t taken enough photos yet today.”  We resolved to bundle up (it was only about 45F after all in February) and head to the beach with our cameras in the fading daylight to take a “few” more photos for the day.  The wind wasn’t blowing very strongly so I wasn’t worried about airborne sand messing up our lenses or cameras.  The tide was going out, which can lead to dramatic wave photos depending on how low the water is over the sandbars near the shore.  Receding water also traps fish and other marine delicacies behind the sand bars for the locals (e.g. seagulls and pelicans and terns, oh my!) to snack on.  That is precisely what we stumbled onto 100 yards from our hotel.

Most of the birds in these photos are Ring-Billed Gulls (Larus delawarensis), though a juvenile Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) did make a cameo, non-speaking, appearance in one of the sequences.  Neither are a +1 for Jan and I

What ended up being a whole bunch of photos, took place over the course of only 2-3 minutes.  At ten frames per second, it doesn’t take very long to take hundreds of photos when two cameras are running flat out.  Especially when there is really fun bird action happening right in front of us.  I didn’t use a laser range finder, but I think the food fight was less than 50 feet away in the shallow tidepool.  Jan and I had the added difficulty (trying to pad our annual review verbiage) of the focusing depth of field being very shallow since the gulls were so close to us.  Plus, we were both using 200-500mm lenses.  In the fading light, we had the shutters wide open and the ISO cranked up a bit.  Please keep in mind that the challenge of keeping the cameras on the subject (one of three) may result in less than sharp photos.

The scene started out with a small group of Ring-billed Gulls seeing a fish in the shallow tide water.  One enterprising young gull (based on plumage) took the initiative to grab it.  Hilarity ensued.  Well, at least for those of us watching.  I’m not sure the captive fish was having a very fun time.  Based on the amount of yelling that one gull was doing, I don’t think it was having fun either.  After all, it wasn’t the one with a tasty fish in its bill.  I’m imagining the center gull yelling at the one on the right, without the fish, to go catch the gull on the left with the fish.

The poor fish was captured and dropped at least two times while we watched.  In truth, it may have been a different fish each time, I wasn’t able to get a fish ID.  I think it was a juvenile American Shad (Alosa sapidissima) but without adult fish nearby as a reference it’s tough to tell, just like with juvenile birds.  Is there a Merlin equivalent for fish?  Since it was the same three gulls involved throughout the series of photos, could this have been a gull family training their offspring on how to catch (not drop) a fish?  Orca pods are known to train the younger whales in a similar manner.

Based on the photos, the adult gull was always diving towards the splash as the younger gull gave up and dropped the fish several times in a row.  Ironically, it seemed to always be the younger gull that was agile enough to twist around to grab the fish before the oldster claimed it.  I was beginning to feel sorry for the fish.  Thinking from the perspective of the fish:  being captured by gulls must be terrifying, but to think you (the fish in this case) may have escaped only to be caught again must really be the pits. 

I am pretty sure this is the same fish because it was probably stunned from the earlier attempts.  I’m sure the same gull has the fish that dropped it the first time.  The old adage about “eyes being bigger than your stomach” comes to mind.

Ironically, there were certainly many more fish in the shallows.  This group of gulls had become so focused on this particular fish, that they ignored all the other fish that were stuck in the tide water.  Is it that much easier to steal one from a younger gull than to make the effort to get one from the water?  Based on prior visits, we have observed it is far easier to steal a sandwich from a tourist on the beach than to get a fish from the water.  No sandwiches were harmed during this photo series.

Following the sequence of events through hundreds of photos, it was always the adult gull “yelling” at the one with the fish.  I’m not sure if it was coaching, chastising, or wanting its share of the catch.  The Yelling Gull (Vociferous delawarensis), not an officially recognized gull species name, could have just as easily recaptured the fish each time it was dropped.  I have not yet taken the 400-level course called Speaking Gull offered through Intrigued Training, but I’m pretty sure the one vocalizing all the time was saying, “Mine!  Mine!  Mine!” (apologies to Finding Nemo).  Granted, my ability to speak gull is rudimentary at best, but I also thought I heard the fish being called “Chalupa” as is “Drop The” (apologies to Taco Bell).

In the end, none of the Ring-Billed Gulls succeeding in swallowing the fish.  I’m betting the gulls didn’t give up fishing, so the story probably doesn’t end well for our fish friend.  I do know that Jan and I had taken enough photos for the day.  We headed back to our hotel on the beach to download photos from our cameras to see what we captured from the day.  Besides, temperatures were only in the 40’s along the water and the sun was setting.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more Food Fight photos, please visit here.

Credits

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for many of the photos in this article.