Flash Dance…by Brad Marks

As you already know, Linda and I are on our way out to the CPE Agility Nationals in Washington. I have to say, we did not have the best start weatherwise. On our first night we had to shelter in a campground laundry building in Council Bluffs, IA while tornado warnings blared around us. The next night we hunkered down in Ogalalla, NE as I-80 was shut down due to a 5-8″ snow storm that came through that night. Top it off, the next day we sat parked on I-80 for 3 hours while they hauled semis out of the median combined with some idiot’s decision to take a main east-west thoroughfare down to one lane due to construction for miles and miles. In all this chaos, there has been one bright spot – the birding has been awesome! Since we left, I am now up 27 birds for the year with 2 lifers and 3 brand new states lit up on my eBird account…and this isn’t even with my usual hardcore birding as we have basically been getting the RV setup at whatever state we ended up in and hitting the closest birding hotspot with whatever time we had left. I’ll kick into the real birding endeavor once we get past the agility event. Needless to say, I am pretty exhausted from the travel so going to put my May series on pause and let Brad take over with another fun adventure from Down Under. Take care everyone, I’ll touch base again soon.

Take it away Brad…

I know in the past I have commented how many house sparrows Jan and I seem to find on our travels.  Well, there’s another family of birds that seems to be just as prevalent, and just as varied.  Today’s bird is also typically lumped under the same family name without being identified as a separate species by many casual observers:  Sea gulls or just plain gulls.  I did my best to try to differentiate some of them here, at least the ones we could find in South Carolina.  Today’s story takes us to a place far from South Carolina.  So far away, in fact, that it makes South Carolina look like it’s North.

Jan and I first spotted one of the subject gulls while changing planes in Sydney on our way to Melbourne.  Having the cameras packed, I made a mental note that there’s another one of those darned birds near an airport.  Though this one looked a little bit different from the versions we see in the States.  But after flying 22 hours overnight with little sleep, I was hard pressed to make any sort of identification

My what red feet you have… hit the jump to learn more about this slippered bird’s interesting behavior.

On our first full day in Melbourne, Jan and I spotted these gulls again in Treasury Park next to our hotel.  And then again along the Great Ocean Road along southern Australia.  They were also in Port Arthur and Dunalley on Tasmania.  Even smack dab in the middle of the Outback at Uluru, hundreds of miles from any large body of water (my stereotypical view of these birds).  No surprise we found them again in Cairns (pronounced “cans”) and Sydney where it makes more sense with water nearby.  We saw them again in Wellington, New Zealand.  Et cetera ad infinitum.

This is the Silver gull (Chroicocephalus novaehollandia), another +1 for Jan and I.

In Cairns, along the edge of the Coral Sea, I happened to catch a behaviour (using Aussie spellings again throughout because it’s fun) I had seen before in South Carolina but didn’t’ take the time to photograph.  I wish I would have been able to enable the video capability on my camera this time.  I’ve done it in the past, but too much time has passed since the last time I used video mode and I have forgotten the sequence of buttons I need to press to capture video through my DSLR.  That and the sweat dripping into my eyes was a bit distracting.  Have I mentioned that Cairns, even in October, is quite warm and humid?  The temp this morning was already about 30C (85F) with 100% humidity.

Normally, you look at specific features of the bird itself.  An easy indicator in this part of the world is the red bill and red legs.  Usually online, or book, sources go on about throat colour, eye colour, wing or breast streaking, etc.  The characteristic I’m talking about now isn’t a physical part of the bird.  I didn’t find any reference to the behaviour Jan and I saw today in any of my bird books, nor my trusted online birding sites.  Oh, I’m sure it’s online somewhere, but I didn’t take time to read the entire interweb.  I did find a general description of what we observed.

This Silver Gull is channeling its inner Flash Dance, but dancing in the water instead of having it poured from above.  “Dancing” occurs in very shallow water, hoping to stir up a snack that has been hiding in the mud.  I did capture the gull turning full circles, but seeing the gull from the back doesn’t really make a good story.  This “dancing” behaviour is called Foot Paddling. 

The following statement was taken many different sources and reassembled here.  Foot Paddling is “a clever foraging technique where gulls rapidly shuffle or stomp their feet in very shallow water to stir up the sediment, tricking hidden prey like small fish, crustaceans, or worms into moving, making them easy to snatch.  The vibration is thought to mimic rain, drawing invertebrates to the surface, and can be seen in various gulls globally, even on wet lawns, as they hunt for food in tidal areas or mudflats.”  I would have guessed and written nearly the same exact statement if only I was able to see under water while this was happening.  The first time Jan and I saw foot paddling was during the Gull Dance Party at Hilton Head (here).

I carefully checked all of the photographs, and I didn’t see a single headband, torn sweatshirt or even a pair of tiny leg warmers.  Nor did I find any chairs with buckets of water suspended above them.

Silver Gulls are prolific, and have learned to scavenge successfully from human inhabited areas.  The gulls find tourist hotspots and trash dumps irresistible.  I’m not comparing tourist hotspots with trash dumps directly, mind you, but have you seen how some groups of tourists treat these areas?  Silver Gulls also feed on small fish, insects, worms and small crustaceans.  A pair will raise up to three eggs twice per year, usually within a large colony.  Both adults share in nest building, incubating and feeding the young.  Silver Gulls look similar to Herring Gulls, but are much smaller.  Thankfully, to make identification easier, there’s no overlap in their ranges.  Silver Gulls are found throughout Australia (or as our tour guide Graeme says, “’stralia”), New Zealand and New Caledonia.

This one was telling me it’s time to move along.

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more Silver Gulls, please visit here. 

Credits

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