Gull re-feeding‏ Alan Fritzberg 12/17/13

This may be just old news to the real birders among us.  However, despite years of being around the shoreline areas and seeing gulls, I guess I haven’t spent time with a cup of hot coffee and watched them enough to see the variety of behaviors they exhibit.  I wasn’t doing this during the CBC either, that is, sipping coffee and just watching gulls.  

However, at Marine Park on Sunday, Ginger Ridgway and I noticed a mature gull and a fairly large immature gull being obnoxious while begging around the parent. This included bumping and pushing of the parent by the young ‘un.  This went on for a quite a while.  The two of them turned toward us and at that time food started coming out of the parent’s mouth in a stream of pieces.  The immature one quickly scavenged the pieces and the area returned to a more peaceful condition.

Alan

I would think that it is a little late in the season to be feeding chicks? Is this normal?

The most interesting gull behavior that I have ever seen happened about three years ago in Fairhaven. I was walking along tenth street with my husband when we heard a mighty angry/distressed gull cry from above. We looked up to see a large mature gull dangling another mature gull by the nape of the neck over the edge of the roof of a two story building! The first gull held that screaming gull there by the neck for about a minute while the dangled gull screamed . Finally it let go of the dangled gull, which then glided a short way and then flew away! This was in early summer.  ??? Adena

I have a seagull that I see everyday that I am home, sitting by the suet feeder or up on my roof, waiting for some suet nuggets to drop to the ground.  It also drinks fresh water daily from the bird feeder.  This has been going on for more than 2 years, all year round.

Carol Rice