Observations by rejeanlemay

Smart Seagulls

On my recent trip to British Columbia, I paid a few early-morning visits to the Esquimalt Lagoon near Victoria waiting long hours for predator birds to make, or not make, their appearance into the scene of this scenic bird sanctuary. At the end of the month of August, the main attractions, based on number of individuals, include great blue herons and seagulls. The latter bird species, mainly the Glaucous-winged Gull, is shown herein at different stages of development. This bird takes about 3 years to develop its final adult reproductive-age plumage.

In addition to alerting me of the arrival of predator birds, such as bald eagles, the gulls offered me a feeding spectacle that kept my camera trigger finger busy while I was waiting for other birds of interest to show up. Shooting the gulls, often in flight, helped me with keeping the camera settings optimized as light conditions changed from sunrise to midday.

As illustrated by the first 17 sequential images in this album, the way the gulls were feeding from the lagoon was rather interesting and was a behavior that I do not recall noticing (but still may exist) from their sister species populating the province of Ontario. On the western coast, gulls dig out shellfishes, mostly clams at the Esquimalt Lagoon, which are vulnerable at low tides. They will pick up shellfishes and drop them from a height onto the shoreline gravel in order to crack the shells. The birds will immediately dive down to the final resting place of the shellfishes and feed on the now accessible flesh. Generally, a single drop suffices in cracking the shell. It appears that the gulls selectively use the gravel beach to minimize bouncing of the shellfishes after impact.

Because of the relatively large number of gulls frequenting the Colwood's Lagoon, one can observed and hear this process which is being repeated frequently at low tide. Fortunately, it appears the gulls have yet to discover that cars parked along the Lagoon’s Ocean Boulevard might offer convenient surfaces for cracking the clams. Perhaps, their future meal would bounced too much if dropped on cars, leading to unnecessary skirmishes between the birds.

Not so clever are the clams sprouting out streams of water into the air attracting the attention of the gulls and leaving signs of their presence in the form of little sandy craters on the partially or fully exposed lagoon bottom.

Here I spent 4 hrs, 1:20 pm to 5:15 pm, with a single snowy owl. Whenever there is more than one owl in an image you are looking at the same individual showing different postures or expressions. The bird finally took flight at sunset.