Flock of Seagulls

Remember the band? From the 80s I think. The song "I Ran" has been stuck in my head every now and then since I watched a friend play GTA: Vice City on Playstation some years ago... I have a song on my mind all the time, and often more than one simultaneously :/

Well, enough about that... This is not a post about music, but seagulls. Gulls, anyway :) Don't know if you have been watching, but the nesting pair of gulls on the roof successfully hatched three chicks. Now that they are big enough to roam around, they are not often seen on camera any more. Here are some cute pictures:

I have also met the pair of Herring Gulls that visit my grandmother every year (read more about them in this post). For some reason they are not very tame this year, so they haven't been hand fed yet. But they still come pretty close :) This is the female. We recognize her by a hole in her foot, which has been there for years and does not seem to hurt her.

Another pair of Herring Gulls have had their nest in a very strange spot: underneath a small tree on a tiny field by the neighbor's driveway, and just a few yards from my grandmother's garage. About ten days ago the neighbor cut the grass on the field with a tractor lawnmower, and the gull did not move an inch! So now the grass is taller just around the nest, which I think is a little annoying for the neighbor but perfect for the birds :)

The two chicks have started to go out of the nest now, but they haven't moved very far yet, and the parents are always watching over them. They let us come very close, but they do "bark" at us sometimes. Here they are ten days ago:

These pictures were taken yesterday, less than ten yards away:

Aren't they cute? I would like to just pick one up and give it a great big hug :) I don't get people that don't like gulls, I love them!

The Oystercatchers have left the building...

But there's a new pair of birds in the house! Well, on the house anyway :) According to the comments there are actually several new birds on the roof, but the camera is now showing a nesting Common Gull (Larus Canus, the North American variety is also called Mew Gull). There are also two pairs of Lesser Black-backed Gulls (Larus Fuscus) with new chicks :)

As you can see the nest is not in the same spot as the Oystercatchers', but it's not very far away. The Oystercatcher chick is actually still roaming around up there, but it's a large roof, so I doubt he will be seen on camera again. Here are some funny pictures of the little darling:

Despite the parents' best effort to hatch that last egg (they even tried to feed it!), it never hatched, and on Thursday the family finally left the nest for good.

This week the egg was checked, and they found it had not been fertilized, which is sort of good. Another year one of the chicks had died just days from hatching :( But this year's chick (now named Tjeldrik) is growing and doing just fine! He has been weighed and ringed so we can find him again when he grows up :) He will stay on the roof for another week or two, then he'll jump the 20m down on the lawn and join his parents in the park :)

(Picture from Facebook)

Summer guests :)

Today my mother called me to say that our summer guests have arrived :) Larus and his wife have returned from winter migration to lay eggs and raise babies, and as usual they come to my grandmother's house where they sit on the lawn and beg for food and attention. We call the male Larus because that's the Latin name for the Herring Gull, Larus Argentatus, but the female doesn't really have a name. We just call her the female :) This is a picture of the pair from last year, eating scraps of dinner from a plate:

They are actually tame enough to eat from our hands! They are a little sceptical the first couple of days, but after that they will hang around every time food is brought outside. Larus has tried to land on the barbecue grill to get the hot dogs more than once, and he's even been inside the house a few times when we've left the door open :)

I can remember Larus from when I was little, I suspect he's even older than I am! He's been around for a long time, but it's only in the later years he has brought his mate with him to the house. The first year or two she was very shy, but now she's as tame as he is :) When their chicks are grown enough they usually follow their parents down to the house, but they have never become tame like them.

A few years ago we thought that Larus and his mate were about to get competition for the food, when a Great Black-backed Gull showed up and was almost as tame as they are. He took food from our hands and sat outside the house all the time, but unfortunately he chased Larus and his mate away... 

We named him Ramses Larus Martinus, but he was only there for a year, the next summer he was around, but never came close again. We suspect he was sick and had a hard time finding food for himself. Thankfully he seems to have recovered, and has probably raised many babies of his own. I look forward to going home for the summer and seeing them all :)