A Gull's View of Cormorants

Herring Gulls, juvenile and adult

Toward the end of summer adult gulls know it's time for their offspring to become self-reliant. They begin weaning the young ones from gratuitous meals.

The deprivation provokes a chorus of juvenile anguish. The parents hold firm. They take the neophytes to sea to learn the craft of independent living. They introduce them to superior fish finders, the cormorants.


A Herring Gull harassing a cormorant while its youngster,
 and a Great Black-backed Gull, look on
 

The young gull takes the lesson. Its hunger and its genetic code confront the cormorant. It tests its advantages.

The cormorant dives, for safety and for food.

When it resurfaces with a fish in its beak, the young gull dashes in.

The cormorant flips the fish around to swallow it head first while dodging the inexpert attack.

Then it pivots to deliver a sharp lesson of life beyond the nest.

 

 

When gulls and cormorants retire from the contested waters of the ocean to the shelter of the Halibut Point quarry they leave animosity behind.

A Gull's View of Gannets

Gannets soar eye to eye with gulls, searching out schools of fish. Their bright white silhouettes pointed at front and rear, long tapering wings at the middle of the body, and stiffer flight mechanics distinguish them from gulls. The 5 to 6 foot wingspan helps them glide efficiently for a life at sea, ranging seasonally from the North Atlantic to the tropics.

During their fall migration moving south past Cape Ann gannets use the prevailing winds to circle around Massachusetts Bay. Their peregrinations bring some of them close enough to Halibut Point for us to witness their spectacular fishing methods from shore. Eyes set far forward close to the beak afford them better binocular vision than most birds, for calculating distances and pinpointing prey.

A gannet will plunge-dive from heights over one hundred feet to surprise fish under water. Air sacs within special bone structures absorb the surface impact. Its nostrils are located protectively inside the beak.

As it nears the water a gannet takes on an increasingly ballistic shape, wings reduced to aerodynamic guidance fins, muscle mass pulled in tight. It hits the water in an arrow-like profile with a minimal splash as aspired to by Olympic divers.

The gannet propels itself to chase fish with webbed feet and 'rowing' wings. It usually swallows its prize before surfacing. Gulls may be waiting to take advantage of its fishing prowess in depths that they cannot reach. 

Gannet hastily swallowing a fish

Here in New England we are at the northern edge of the gannet's winter distribution. Next month the population will begin migrating back to nesting sites on rocky islands and inaccessible cliffs of the North Atlantic rim, all under the close eye of gulls.

Gulls and Fish

Three types of gulls claim niches on the Halibut Point shoreline in winter. They have developed overlapping approaches to mastery of the air, land, and sea. Every day, balmy or stormy, they contend with each other for the necessities of survival.

The Great Black-backed Gull

The largest and most territorial of the gulls can give an eagle-like impression in size, plumage, and demeanor, particularly given both birds' proclivity for scavenging at the water's edge.

In the receding tide Great Black-backed gulls use their strong beaks to capture shellfish in rocky crevices. They defend these prizes vigorously.

The Herring Gull

Grey-winged Herring Gulls have an occupational presence similar to their larger relative, patrolling the shoreline and the ocean surface for anything edible.

Being smaller and more maneuverable than the Great Black-backed, they have their own edge in the search for food.

This one spotted a crab in water shallow enough for a plunging grab.

The Ring-billed Gull

Although they both have black-tipped grey wings the smaller Ring-billed Gull differentiates itself from the Herring Gull by spending most of its time on or over the water, with distinctive buoyancy.

Tern-like it stays alert for the opportunity of hunting fish on the wing. Better than its brawnier relations it can hover, twist and dive.

When big fish drive little ones to the surface the bird's moment materializes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Within reason, a Ring-billed Gull will go where the fish are.

It may have only a split second before an overhead pirate tries to grab its prize. The pirate will undoubtedly be another gull.

Winter Mists

 

Looking East,

 

 

the rising sun makes a potion of light and
 

 

 

steaming ethers.

 

 

 

 

 

Precise silhouettes solidify elusive facts.

The ingredients of the day frame a moment
 

 

 

that Razorbills chart with purpose,

 

 

disappearing to the West.