Seagulls at the Trough
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Seagulls may be raucous and messy, but they are sleek graceful birds. They would even be considered beautiful if they had better manners. It is fun to watch them still. Flock politics and pecking order, feeding behavior and aerobatic skill make them entertaining.
The local canneries are closed for the year and no longer putting out seagull delicacies like ground fish heads and fins. Town gulls must forage for a survival diet to see them through to the next fishing season. Country seagulls are fine with wild fare all year around.
M-m-m-m, starfish for lunch. Score!
Gotta get it positioned just right.
It's best to get at least two legs started in the right direction.
Seagulls can unhinge their jaws so that they can eat huge bites. Sort of like a hungry sixteen-year-old boy.
Now if the starfish would just bend.
Gulp!
The flock in our harbor are mostly immature birds this time of year, with a few adults sprinkled around to babysit. The juveniles' plumage is light grey-brown and mottled.
The neighboring boat left for a few days, opening up prime foraging territory.
Seagulls lined up like pigs at a trough.
They pulled mussels, and sometimes clumps of mussels off of the dock for lunch. It was like a self-serve food bar. There seem to be some rules, though.
- When you get a beakful you must move away from the food bar to minimize theft.
- If you move away from the food bar you lose your place.
Mine, mine, mine.
- If an aggressive seagull pushes you out of your place then you can go push somebody else out of their space.
- The loudest gull doesn't always win, but it is worth the screaming anyway.
- Biting is bad form, but is occasionally the way to get the point across.
Chomp!
So the seagulls are eating mussels seasoned with limpets and barnacles. All of those foods come in their own packaging. How does a seagull get through the hard shells to digest the rubbery, gooey center?
First the gull has to horf that puppy down into it's crop. That is a pouch in it's esophagus where it can store food. Temporarily, of course. When you see a gull's neck bulging unnaturally then it has food in it's crop.
Here goes...
Vito No-Neck here just has a crop full of mussels.
You really want to see that again, don't you?
This one is even smiling.
Slurp!
After a stop in the crop, the mussels get a digestive juice bath in the first part of the gull's stomach (the proventriculous) and then are broken up in the muscular pouch called the gizzard. Skipping some digestive details, the seagull burps out most of the shells like an owl regurgitates a pellet. The rest you can figure out, as you must watch your step on the dock and never walk under a seagull that is perched on a light pole. Never, never walk under a flock of seagulls that are taking off.
At the end of the day the flock settles down for a quiet paddle around the harbor before perching on the dock for the night.
Sunset at Heritage Harbor
Wishing you full bellies and the good company of your flock,
Alaska Beachcomber
More on birds in Southeast Alaska:
Arctic Terns at Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau
Crows and Ravens Love Dog Food