Herring Gull pair long call duetting

You have probably seen Gibbon pairs duetting in nature documentaries or videos. It is a territory display that shows how the pair is well bonded, and the turn-taking of the duetting is amazingly precise, the pair alternating calls to produce a single 'song' that advertises their presence and ownership of a territory. But you don't need to travel to distant tropical jungles to witness pairs duetting animals. Herring Gulls do it all the time. Because their long call is so familiar we tend not to pay much attention to it, but I was made to stop a couple of days ago when a pair landed on a chimney stack opposite my house (above). One of the pair seemed intent on long calling, and started to call, followed each time by its partner. Long calls become commonplace during the breeding season, when pairs defend territories or food, as it appears to have an aggressive function. Here is a sonogram of it. The gull starts calling with the neck pointing down, the calls well spaced, then the calling becomes faster in a staccato and the gull stretches its neck and points up and then the call dies in intensity. In 'The Herring Gull world, Tinbergen describes the call, saying that 'The voice of the herring gull is wonderfully melodious’‘There are few sounds as evocative, as stirring as the profound, plaintive beauty of their calls.' However, he missed the fact that it often occurs in pairs, there the pair message is not to each other, but to other gulls. The duetting has also been described in other gulls, like in the Western Gull.

A pair of Herring Gulls with their two young duet on a roof in Filey.

Often, one of the pair starts the call, and the other joins in and they end the long call together, necks stretched, bills pointing up.
Why do gulls long call? They seem to do it when they have asserted their ownership of something (food, for example) or finish a squabble, or sometimes the whole Herring Gull colony calls and pairs joins together. I'm surprised I've found so little about this amazing behaviour other than anecdotal references to it, but this is a wonderful photo of a pair duetting.

More information

An article on long calls in various gull species. Earbirding.

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.

Gulls mobbing Buzzard

From my office I hear several Herring Gulls start calling plaintively, kyeoh! kyeoh! a loud, far carrying call that I associate to buzzards overhead. I looked through the window. The local Carrion Crows had assembled atop a large poplar, watching nervously, calling and displaying wing shuffling and tail fanning.

A dozen gulls soared and called - all the local Herring gulls - slowly assembling and ascending on the thermals. Then I see a Buzzard, soaring higher. The gulls didn't reach the buzzard's height and it eventually drifted away and the gull calls died off.
 Gulls often alert me to raptors. A couple of years back it was a Honey Buzzard, migrating over town. I pay a lot of attention to the gulls alarm call since then!

 Later, at home, the scene appears to repeat itself. Alarm calling gulls. I grab the camera and go out into the garden. Two Lesser Black-backed gulls are mobbing a Buzzard.
 This gull alarm call is persistent and sounds distressed, it is hard to ignore. It seems to attract other gulls too, who soar and chase the potential predator. I wonder if it is how young gulls learn to identify the predators they are likely to come across in their lives. Crowd knowledge of the enemies, initiated by older gulls with previous experience, who in turn learned it in their youth. Immature offspring of the gulls initiating the mobbing are likely to be around. The adults could be 'teaching' young about potential predators and the young are likely to benefit from this at some point in the future. This is a hypothesis called 'cultural transmission of mobbing' which was explored in some experiments by E. Curio and collaborators in 1978. They showed that exposure of a novel object to a 'naive' Blackbird at the same time a 'teacher' blackbird is mobbing results in learning to mob the new object (in one of their experiments a colourful bottle). This teaching could be passed through six rounds of learning in which the learner becomes the teacher of a new bird, and so on. The fact that enemies often have to be recognised culturally was put to a sad test when captive reared endangered Hawaii crows (or Alalā) were released into their natural habitat. The last wild Alalā had died in 2002. Two of six newly released birds were predated by native hawks, to which the captive reared birds were completely naive in the first week after release. The conservationist recaptured the surviving birds and started an intensive 'predator training' program in which the captive crows were exposed to hawks calls, hawks flying overhead and simulated hawk attacks. Hopefully the savvy crows will do better when they are released next.
This time of the year there seem to be a passage of migrating or dispersing Buzzards over the city. The gulls are breeding, probably incubating now, and a buzzard could be a predator likely not for them, but for eggs left unattended or young chicks. It makes sense that the gulls see off the potential predator.
I got this short clip from the garden:


More information
Curio, E., Ernst, U. and Vieth, W. Cultural transmission of enemy recognition: one function of mobbing. Science 202, 899–901 (1978).

Different gull calls: here.

A blog post including some great photos of Herring gulls mobbing a Buzzard

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

Playing herring gulls

This morning at a local park, I noticed a young Herring Gull picking an object, flying off and being chased by another. Then the gull landed on the water and dropped the object and pretended to dive to pick it up repeatedly, as in a lazy drop-catch game. When I saw the object at a better angle I realised it was an empty freshwater mussel shell, which happened to float. Funnily enough, a couple of hours later when I walked past either another or the same young Herring Gull was still playing with it.

The young gull flies off with the freshwater mussel shell.

Later on, with cloudy weather, two gulls handling the shell.

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.

Into the eye of the winter herring gull

 The resident pair of Herring gulls are back at the park. One of the individuals (above) has its full winter attire with a streaked grey head, which gives it a particularly stern look. The other one, which seems smaller (maybe the female?) still has a very white head. A young of the year is also about.

Dancing for worms

I had blogged before on this curious gull behaviour, although that occasion I didn't manage to see the effects of the gull 'worm dance' or foot-paddling. This morning, on the university ground, a Herring gull did the worm dance energetically, and very effectively on the wet grass. I watched as it captured four or five good size worms more or less in the same spot in a few minutes. Breakfast sorted!



UPDATE 6/08/17. I just found this interesting article by Niko Tinbergen in which he discusses the behaviour in gulls and other birds. He calls it 'foot paddling' and the behaviorr includes paddling in shallow water:
Tinbergen, N. (1962). Foot-paddling in gulls. British Birds, 55(3), 117-120. Here.

Keeping an eye on the crow

I was watching a crow feeding on the ground, picking morsels of food from a large chunk it was pinning to the ground with its foot when this Herring Gull flying over saw the scene, found it as interesting and quickly tipped its wing and landed low on a shed roof overlooking the crow. I had just the time to take this shot, as the gull decided maybe it wasn't worth trying to steal the crows food with me as witness, and took off.

Happy feet

A mild day, the ground waterlogged with the past rains, and the grass peppered of earthworm casts, Lumbricus terrestris. A pair of Herring Gulls hunt for worms on the wet soil, rapidly patting it with their feet. The rapid rhythmic pattering creates vibrations on the soil similar to rain, and the earthworms move to the surface. I took a poor quality video, although it shows the behaviour of one of them, looking very intently to the ground and pecking occasionally. During some seconds it uses only one of its legs while keeping balance with the other.

Winter Herring gull pair

The Herring Gull pair at The Rock faithfully return to the park for the winter, and watch developments from their vantage point. I assume it is always the same pair, they stay together and I've never seen more than two at once. Herring Gulls are monogamous, mate for life and live long lives, so the pair might have been visiting the park for years. They are relaxed around people, and, unlike their relatives at the coastal resorts, do not bother people for scraps. They just wait. They know people will bring food to them at the park, no need to beg, just wait patiently.
 Herring gulls are in their winter plumage now, their heads and necks streaked with grey feathers. By February, their head and feathers will be pure white and soon after they won't be as regular in the park, having moved to their summer grounds for breeding.

The Herring Gull pair at The Rock

More often than not there will be a Herring Gull pair by the pond in my local park. I assume it must be the same pair, as seagulls are long-lived birds and they behave in an aggressive way to immature gulls that land near the pond. This pair likes a particular spot which I call "The Rock", a vantage point on a promontory on the edge of the pond, and both individuals often stand there side by side.
 Today, a gang of excited Mallard males were giving chase to a female and one of them started mating with her. This behaviour is common in Mallards and is known as forced copulation, where there is no display and the female is corralled by males who are not their partners and forced to mate. The gull, which was very close, saw this, walked to the mating pair, and pecked the male! Not just a gentle peck, no, she even got some feathers out of him. This was a bit too much for the drake, his passion was quickly dispelled, he dismounted the female immediately and walked away a bit ruffled while the other drakes watched. Everything happened fast and I only had time to take a shot of the last part of the scene (below).

 Ouch!

The pair of Herring Gulls at the Rock 

Some twenty minutes later I noticed the pair were calling noisily with their miaowing calls, they were feeding on something on the ground. An egg! By the look of it it was a duck's egg all cracked and its contents spilled on the path. When I went to check, it had all the looks of an infertile egg. Still, the seagulls took turns feeding on it.

 One of the Herring Gulls feeding on the egg

The spilled egg

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