Tag: Laughing Gull

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.

Gulls found by Brad and Jan in South Carolina

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”.

Continue reading Food Fight…by Brad Marks

Gulls, Gulls, Gulls…by Brad Marks

Hello everyone and welcome to July or as I call it now “Ja’ Y’d You F Up Your Summer”. Just a quick update, I made it through surgery and everywhere I walk the 6 Million Dollar Man theme can now be heard. Big thanks to my wife for having to pick up the slack (although hiding my running shoes is a bit cruel!), Brad has been keeping my spirits up and truly appreciate all of your kind thoughts and wishes for a speedy recovery. Unfortunately, I have a ways to go…not to mention now having to tear the house apart for my shoes…the race is this weekend!!!! Luckily, Brad has several posts in the hopper to fill the void. Take care everyone.

Take it away Brad…

Doesn’t that title remind you of a song from the hair bands of the 1980’s, MTV, and a specific lifeguard sitcom?   Just try to get that out of your head while you read the story.

In the past, we at Intrigued have talked about “LBJ’s” (little brown jobbers).  There should also be an acronym for the nearly endless variety of gulls.  The company Brian and I used to work for had thousands of acronyms.  There were so many . . . how many were there . . . there were so many acronyms that we had a spiral-bound notebook just to be able to keep track of them all.  Whenever I see a seagull flying around, even this far inland in central Illinois, I think it’s just another seagull, or just another gull (JAG).  The word “seagull” is a generic term for any gull-like bird near water.  Many of the “gulls” I see on a regular basis are nowhere near a major body of water.  I don’t normally take the time to tell the gulls apart.  I usually just call it a seagull, remind myself to tag it later in Lightroom as a “gull”, and then move onto the business of enjoying the rest of our vacation.

Gulls from Brad Marks

On our recent winter trip to South Carolina, I was doing the same thing.  Jan and I took photos of “gulls” we saw flying near the ocean.  It wasn’t really until we took a walk on Sunset Beach that I realized “Hey, these don’t all look the same.”  I thought, “Great, something else I need to identify when we get home.”  And before anyone asks, I don’t think any of these were named Jonathon Livingston.

Hit the jump to see more gulls, gulls, gulls!

Continue reading Gulls, Gulls, Gulls…by Brad Marks

Laughing Stock

Holy crap, I get disconnected from the Internet for just a couple of days only to get back online and find out we had another embassy overrun. Regardless of the opinions on whether we should have been there or minimally that long etc., those that have served there and especially those that gave the ultimate sacrifice deserve better than the images I am seeing on lame stream media at the moment. I can only imagine what other superpowers are thinking at this moment. Looking through the available images, figured I would go with this for today’s featured feathered friend.

Laughing Gull found at Dauphin Island, Alabama Gulf Shores in January of 2021

The Laughing Gull is not new to the blog. Back in march of 2019, I covered the specimens we found while visiting Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia {shirk eyesight, stare sheepishly at the ground, hum a bit} from our 2015 trip (link here). Yeah, that was a 4 year lag for that. As an act of retribution, today’s images are equally 4 away, but this time the units are months. They still have that new car smell.

Laughing Gull found at Dauphin Island, Alabama Gulf Shores in January of 2021

Hit jump to read about the Dauphin Island Walmart greeter.

Continue reading Laughing Stock

Have a Laugh on Me

Let’s go ahead and continue with the Georgia birding trip theme for another March post. From what I can tell from a quick count that excursion to the swamps to the east resulted in at least a +5. Yep, 5 count increments that have simply been sitting in bit purgatory since May 2015 waiting for someone to give them a bit of love and in some cases a dose of processing to get them in decent enough shape to show the world. Suspect there’s probably less than 800 images left to comb through to finish out the haul from the trip – one good effort over the weekend should put a bow on Georgia processing. That just leaves the easy part, smacking the keyboard in hopes of delivering a post worthy my reader’s time. To that end I bring you the second +1 from the trip.

Laughing Gull found at Tybee Island, Georgia May 2015

For starters, in case you haven’t noticed, I do not feature a lot of Gulls on the blog. There are two main reasons for this. One is the fact that they can be damn hard to ID unless you are lucky enough to find the ones that are regionally constrained or have some unique element that makes them stand out from the horde. I have taken 10’s of thousands of shots of Gulls in my adventures in the field and very few of them fall into the easy to ID category. Many are juveniles or females which have about an equal chance of getting correctly labeled as a juvenile Sparrow. Thus, those shots lay nestled on their digital platters patiently waiting for me to dig in and devote the time and energy to properly check them off the list. Knowing the Gulls are pretty much untapped gives me a bit of comfort when it comes to my relatively low bird count and something to fall back to on a rainy day.

Laughing Gull found at Tybee Island, Georgia May 2015

Hit the jump to find out more about this hooded bandit.

Continue reading Have a Laugh on Me