Loafing gulls

 Gulls spend a good portion of their days doing what is known as 'loafing', in open areas of good visibility: playing fields, beaches, but also on water and on ice in frozen lakes, the same sites are chosen year on year. These loafing areas are different from night roosting sites. At loafing sites gulls appear relaxed: some sleep - head under wing - others sit or stand watching around, others preen. Immatures may play with objects such as sticks or leaves. Loafing areas are common areas, and tend to be quiet, with little or no squabbling or aggressive behaviour, often with several species mixing in the same area. Individuals come and go, commuting to their feeding areas, unless a disturbance provokes a sudden communal flight. On the coast, the number of individuals in a loafing area follows a tidal cycle - as low tides expose food resources the gulls move away the loafing area to feed- and also time of the year. Tidal influence in sleeping is highly prevalent in wading birds, which strongly depend on exposed shores for feeding. A study in Herring Gulls suggest that they have a dual sleeping pattern, with the proportion of sleeping gulls peaking at midnight and at midday. This may be a common pattern with urban gulls or away from the coast, where food is less related to tidal fluctuations.

A mixed flock of Black-headed gulls, Common Gulls and Herring gulls loafing on a rise on a local park.

Loafing gulls allow good opportunities to check individuals for plastic rings, as shown by this preening Common Gull.

A group of Common Gulls loafing on ice on a frozen pond of (16/1/2013)

More information
Shandelle M. Henson, James L. Hayward, Christina M. Burden, Clara J. Logan and Joseph G. Galusha. 2004. Predicting Dynamics of Aggregate Loafing Behavior in Glaucous-Winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens) at a Washington Colony. Auk 121, 380–390.

Cooke, F. and Ross, R. K. 1972. Diurnal and Seasonal Activities of a Post-Breeding Population of Gulls in Southeastern Ontario. Wilson Bull. 84, 164–172.

Galusha, J. G., JR and Amlaner, C. J., JR. 2008. The effects of diurnal and tidal periodicities in the numbers and activities of Herring Gulls, Larus argentatus, in a colony. Ibis 120, 322–328.

Ringed Common Gull

The Common Gulls at the local park have been back for a few weeks, slowly building up in numbers to about a hundred today. I searched for ringed ones and found JV47, which I first saw on its first winter in January 2015. It is a fully adult gull now and trusting enough to allow me to take a close up.

Another shot from today.

JV47 as a 1st winter immature in typical chick 'hunchback' posture (23/1/2015). He was ringed  the previous October at Bergen, Norway.

Click here to find out about other ringed common gulls at Pearson Park. If you find a ringed gull and you can read the ring, you can report it to Euring, the European Ringing scheme.

A drop-catch game sequence

A caught a short clip of a young Herring Gull playing drop-catch today at a local nature reserve. The gull carried on for quite a while dropping and catching the item.

via GIPHY

Social play in gulls?

Yesterday, the pond at my local park was almost completely iced over. While the ducks and geese kept to a small ice-free patch, the gulls seem to like walking on ice. A few young Common Gulls were about. One of them, a second winter bird, was carrying and handling (or should I say 'billing'?) a piece of moss. She would drop it, pick it up, shake it. She was being followed at close range by another two younger first winter common gulls. The first one eventually dropped the moss and one of the younger gulls swiftly picked it up and carried it for a while, in a repetition of the sequence. Then this gull found a short stick and she pecked it and picked it up repeatedly. I was pleased to get this sequence in video.


I have anecdotally documented play in gulls since Ralph Hancock drew my attention to this behaviour in his blog. Play has been described in gulls before, but only solitary play. But, was the behaviour I watched social object play?  According to Judy Diamond and Alan Bond, in a review on social play in birds (where gulls are not mentioned) state:

'Social object play occurs when two or more individuals engage in repeated interaction with one or more inanimate objects in the environment without subsequent consummatory behavior. The best evidence of social object play is provided by contests over items that cannot be otherwise turned to useful purposes. Role reversals are common in social object play, and the interaction often ends with the contested item simply being discarded.'

I believe that the sequence I watched fits this description quite well. The gulls respond to one another in which the 'carrier' changes direction to avoid the 'chaser' and the chaser follows the carrier paying attention to what it does and is quick to retrieve the object when dropped. The interaction ends when the item is discarded. The interest in the moss by the second individual is affected by the carriers interest in it, like the object is given a new meaning as a 'toy'. Much evidence on social play in birds is anecdotal, which a few exceptions, notably in Keas and Ravens. However, given how social gulls are, and how opportunistic, with much adult behaviour involving stealing food items from each other, it appears surprising social play hasn't described in gulls. Possibly casual watchers of distant gulls assume food objects being the centre of attention instead of inedible 'toys'. The park's wintering flock is well used to people and allow close approximation, so it is easy to check what the gulls are handling. I should definitely pay more attention in the future to potential play sequences.

For more posts at The Rattling Crow on play in birds click here.

More information

Diamond, J., & Bond, A. B. (2003). A comparative analysis of social play in birds. Behaviour, 140(8), 1091-1115.

Play in gulls

I usually check for ringed Common Gulls in my local park. Yesterday the flock, about a hundred strong, converged around someone providing food. While I was checking, a boy run towards the gulls flushing them. A few settled on a puddle nearby, and a second winter one was ringed! I approached and took some photos to try and see the code. No luck, the light was wrong and the gull too active. I decided a video could work as I might be able to get a sharp screen-grab. The gull found a pink object (visible on the left side on the photo above) and started to pick it up and drop it repeatedly, the object bobbed up on the water every time and the gull seemed quite interested, until, after a while, it walked away. I had ended up recording a session of gull play behaviour! I walked away and then thought I wanted to check the object, just in case it was some food item, but no, it was a spongy piece of plastic, probably torn from a soft ball. You can watch the clip here:

 I had never thought gulls played until I started following Ralph Hancock's wonderful blog on the birds on his daily walk around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. He describes and documents gulls (Herring, Common and Black-headed) playing drop-catch with various objects: sticks, leaves, plane tree seed heads, rubbish, and stones, and his observations made me pay more attention. He also pointed to this photo sequence of a young gull playing drop-catch.
 How can we know that a particular behaviour is play? Usually play is invoked when a behaviour appears to serve no adaptive purpose. Jennifer Gamble and Daniel Cristol, from the College of William and Mary, Virginia, studied drop-catch behaviour in Herring gulls to discount alternative hypothesis to play. Their Herring Gull population often dropped clams they find on the mud flats at low tide over hard substrates - a tarmac road nearby - to break the shells and eat them. Could drop-catch serve be a practical behaviour? They tested two alternative explanations: the 'kleptoparasite hypothesis' where drop-catch behaviour could allow a gull to asses the chances that other gulls that might be nearby, be ready to steal the clam as it hit the ground, or the 'reposition hypothesis' where the gull might drop the clam and then catch it to reposition it before a proper drop. In contrast, if drop-catch is a play behaviour they expected:
1) It would be carried out more frequently by juveniles.
2) Objects other than clams would be used.
3) It would be performed over soft substrates.
Their results rejected the alternative hypothesis and fitted the predictions of the play hypothesis: younger gulls engaged in more drop-catching than older gulls, that drop-catching was more commonly done over soft surfaces (the mud flats, as opposed to the road and gulls were less likely to drop-catch a clam (9%) than a non-clam object (62%). The conditions at which drop-catch happened were also more favourable to play behaviour: Drop-catch happened more often at warmer temperatures (when the gulls are less cold-stressed) and when wind was stronger (and flight is less costly).
 Play has been much less studied in birds than in mammals, and most of the research in birds has been done with corvids. Gulls are quite opportunistic, long-lived species and play could potentially have long-term beneficial consequences: perfecting the development of the coordinated flight behaviour required to succeed in kleptoparasitic attacks (gull often chase other gulls carrying food and if the attacked gull drops the food, individuals able to catch the dropped object in the air might have a higher chance of success of catching it first) or possibly practice the clam dropping behaviour.
 I have kept the bit of pink plastic, but I haven't yet managed to read the code on the ring, it starts by JP...

More information
Gamble, J. R. & Cristol, D. A. Drop-catch behaviour is play in Herring gulls, Larus argentatus. Animal Behaviour 63, 339–345 (2002). Here.

Gulls playing helter skelter?

Do birds play? You have probably seen videos of crows sliding down snow and rolling down on car windscreens, or heard of the Australian black swans that enjoy surfing. These cases, and many others documented for a long time, are hard to explain in utilitarian terms (no feeding, or mating or predator avoidance is involved), it appears purposeless, and seem most fitting to actual play. Play behaviour, often solitary, some times involving objects, but also social, has been described in ten orders of birds including corvids, raptors and parrots amongst others. Some of this behaviour involve play flying, or flying in aerobatic ways. This afternoon, in the first mild sunny day of spring, thermals developed over the park, and a large mixed flock of gulls - Herring, Common, Lesser Black backed and at least a black-headed, later joined by a Carrion Crow - started to soar higher and higher, I could barely see them as they circled. My camera decided to run out of battery run out just at the same time (the photo above is the flock flying high this mid February).
 Then I noticed some gulls tumbling down. Not just gliding, but actually flipping over and going on their backs as they descended. Two of them seemed to be flying together, making a downward double spiral, opposite each other, occasionally tumbling. The Carrion Crow also dropped height by closing its wings as if enjoying the feeling of being kept up by the thermal. It was an exhilarating spectacle to watch, and the gulls gave the impression to be having a good time.

The Viking gulls

A flock of about 100 common gulls winters in the park, they arrive at the end of September/October and are around most of the time until the end of March. They are very excitable and their squeals provide the background noise of the park in winter, especially when visitors empty their bags of bread by the side of the pond. A cacophony of calls and chases ensues while the gulls pick the bounty fast, before the ducks and geese have the chance to react.
 Is not only bread though for the park gulls, there are very quiet times, especially during the middle of the week, and the gulls will move onto the grass, looking for worms and other invertebrates, watching the ground intently as they walk.

 In wet days they can be seen 'dancing' (foot-paddling) to entice the worm to the surface of the soil. Like so.

Then they spend some time just flying in circles over the park, in a flock, I am not sure if in preparation to roost, although I am not sure where they spend the night.

A quiet moment in the flock, with preening, snoozing and yawning by the pond.

This is an adult one on winter plumage. Note the yellow bill with faint dark ring near the tip and the yellow legs, and spotty head.

on the 3rd of February this adult looked very nice on the snow, still in winter plumage.

On the 20th of February this adult had an almost white head and a thin red eye ring.

A close up of an adult's head showing mainly yellow bill, red ring. Note the scruffy back of the head, showing the ongoing moult towards a completely white head plumage.

I find them endlessly fascinating and can't stop myself from photographing them, and they are often co-operative, as they are so used to people. When I noted that the flock disappeared each year, one day in March or April I wondered where they would go in the summer, to breed. I need wonder no longer, these gulls come from Bergen, in Norway.
While watching them one day in January I found a couple of Common Gulls with plastic colour rings. I spent some time looking at the legs of many gulls since that day, but I didn't spot any other ringed ones. I managed to get photos where I could read the code and submitted the samples to Euring. I got an e-mail the same day from Morten Helberg with details of their ringing and recoveries. Since then, I have seen the ringed gulls a few times, and managed to get their portraits.

This is J2EX, sex unknown ringed its first autumn (1st calendar year in 2013) which means now should be in its 3rd calendar year (almost adult), although the bill and legs are still grey/bluish and doesn't have a red eye ring or prominent wing 'mirrors'. This is its ringing/recovery history:

15.09 2013 Byparken, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
17.09 2013 Tveitevannet, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
20.09 2013 Tveitevannet, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
21.09 2013 Byparken, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
14.06 2014 Kilnsea, Humberside, Great Britain
14.01 2015 Pearson park Hull, Humberside, Great Britain (the photo above is from yesterday, also observed 22/01/2015)

This is JV47, Sex male age, 1 cy when ringed last October, so it's in his first winter. He still called like a gull chick when feeding, and adopted this hunched chick posture. Legs and bill base pinkish.

This is it's ringing/recovering history:
05.10 2014 Tveitevannet, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
(in the month after it was ringed the flock came back to Pearson Park)
14.01 2015 Pearson park Hull, Humberside, Great Britain 

Looking at photos yesterday, I found another ringed common gull, from the 20th of February. It looks like a first winter bird. The code reads JR20. I will update the post when I hear back from Euring.

It is very nice to know where these gulls spend the summer, but something equally rewarding is to know them as individuals. The rings have allowed me to recognised them in my visits to the park. I will look forward to them coming back in years to come, as gulls can be long lived. A typical Common Gull lives for 10 years (the record is 27).

Snowy Common Gull

A flock of Common Gulls winters in my local park. Today they have been perfecting their dancing on ice skills as the pond is mostly frozen. They seemed to feel safe on the ice, some of them even sitting for a rest on the ice. This handsome adult one sat nicely for a portrait. I like how snow on the ground makes seagulls look a purer white.

City gulls

Most gulls breed away from towns and cities, in lakes, cliffs and other wild habitats. In the winter, however, several species undergo a regional migration toward human habitats, and come back in flocks to use the abundant resources we provide them: litter, refuse and bread. One of the most abundant is the Common Gull, Larus canus. Above, an individual in the pose at the end of giving a long call.

It is curious that gull species have different habitat preferences, even inside towns. Common gulls (all photos above) are abundant in the local parks and are often seen flying over busy streets, but they are rarely seen feeding there. They are very social, and often feed in large flocks on expanses of grass, often seen "worming", with a funny dance, or waking looking intently to the ground. They join ducks and pigeons to be fed with bread in my local park, where I took the photos above, and then they are very approachable. When at close quarters, they have a gentle face, with dark eyes and a rounded head, and greenish bill and legs. Although their heads are white in summer, they are lightly spotted in winter.

Dancing Gulls

I went for a long walk the other day and passed next to some grassy sport grounds. Several Herring Gulls and a Woodpigeon were on it. The Woodpigeon and some of the gulls were lazily dozing on the ground, enjoying the early morning sun. Two of the gulls were doing something more interesting. They were patting the ground moving their feet rapidly, as if running on the spot. After a little while, they stopped and looked into the grass intently, only to start their tap dance-and-watch sequence all over again. Their sustained interest indicated this behaviour was related to obtaining food. Occasionally they pecked the ground, but if they caught something it was small and I coudn't see it. In any case they did not seem to catch any good size earthworms. I took some photos and a very poor quality video. Yesterday I saw the same thing in the local park grass, but this time it was a Common Gull. I got a few answers in The Last Word, the Question and Answer section in the New Scientist. I also found some better quality than mine:

Here, the gull is seen actually catching a couple of worms. It is quite an intriguing behaviour reminiscent of the facts behind the World Worm Charming Championships, which take place in the village of Willaston (Cheshire, U.K.) since 1980. Participants must encourage worms to the surface of the ground by vibration means only (no digging allowed!). The current record is impressive: 567 worms in 30 min from a 3 sqm plot. I was also wondering if the gull behaviour arose when they feed in puddles in the beach and when adopting it on grass, found by chance it actually encourages worms to surface. I can only say, Blackbirds, learn!

Common Gull checking for the effect of its dance