CarenP wrote of watching ring-billed gulls dropping and catching cones. I
have seen glaucaus winged gulls do this same thing with a seaweed part on a
beach off the outer coast. There were about a half a dozen of them doing
this. Same kind of behavior, soaring, then dropping the seaweed then
immediately swooping down to snatch it again. There were also several gulls
perched on logs and the ground giving advice, or other commentary and on
several occasions one of the gulls (and I wondered if it was always the same
one) would pull up higher than the others, let his "toy" fall the longest,
and then make the longest dive to snatch it, inches from the ground. Once
this gull missed and the toy hit the ground, and two gulls closest to me (I
was sunbathing behind a log) turned to each other and started nodding their
heads as if to say: Ha, show off, I knew he wouldn't get that one. This was
in early May and I wondered if maybe it was some kind of breeding ritual.

I have also watched gulls play something like keep away. At first I thought
it was a food stealing kind of behavior, but as best as I could determine,
the item they were stealing was a small piece of red colored plastic. It was
the color of the item that initially got my attention. Several gulls would
chase the one with the plastic who would finally swerve up and let the item
drop, whereby another gull would snatch it up and the chase would begin
anew. This went on for the better part of an hour.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, writer, teacher

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