A few days ago at Fort Worden, the birdlife wasn't very exciting (a few Surf
Scoters, some Harlequin Ducks and Bonaparte's Gulls), but I was fascinated
by a Glaucous-winged Gull trying to feed on a rather large fish. I don't
know fish very well, but this appeared to be a bottom fish, with some orange
on the underside, with a body similar in size to the gull's. The gull had
it just out of the water, on the beach, and kept pecking at it kind of
desultorily: a jab or two with long pauses, during which the bird acted as
if it wasn't much interested and wasn't trying very hard. The fish was
either dead or in the last stages of dying; once in a while, it appeared to
twitch, and I felt some sympathy for the agony I imagined it was feeling.
Anyway, the gull didn't seem to be making much progress; I was expecting it
to pierce the fish's belly at any moment and get access to the guts, so it
could really start eating. But the skin remained intact. Every once in a
while (this went on for 15-20 minutes) the gull would drag the fish back
into the water, as if washing it off. Then it would drag the fish back onto
the beach and start pecking at it again, still in a rather half-hearted way.
Then the gull dragged the fish into the water and seemed to become less and
less interested in the task. A couple of crows were hanging out nearby, and
a couple of times a crow started to drag the fish onto the beach and work on
it, but then retreated when the gull came back. The whole affair was
somewhat like watching a slow-motion film, with none of the birds moving
very fast or getting very excited. Finally, the gull walked away and then
flew away, leaving the dead fish floating in the water.

Does that strike anyone else as being rather bizarre? Here's a large gull
with what looks like a large, tasty meal, yet it hardly tries to eat the
meal and eventually flies away from it. It's hard to believe the fish was
so tough that the gull couldn't penetrate it. If the gull was already
satiated with food, why would it even bother to start fooling with the fish?
The whole event has me puzzled.

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College 360-867-6755
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu

Reunite Gondwana

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20001109/7ade2491/attachment.htm