Let me add my mite of warmth and merriment to the new year
with my brief and true tale of a rapacious gull and a
luckless mallard drake.

At Coon Point on Sauvie Island last Saturday, a lone
Mallard drake was paddling placidly on the flood waters.
Suddenly, a Glaucous-winged Gull lofted itself from the
shore line and dove on the Mallard, splashing down
beside the drake and pecking ferociously at its backside.

The hapless dabbler tried to dive out of danger but quickly
bobbed up again like a dry cork. The gull hammered at the
drake for 10 minutes and then began to tow it--by a long
strand of what looked like mallard guts. At last the
drake turned belly up. The gull dined leisurely on the
defunct duck.

(What weakness did the gull detect in this otherwise
healthy-looking duck?)

--cheers, Jim Lyles <jrlyles at usgs.gov>
Tacoma, WA <jrlyles at eskimo.com>