July 7, 2018
Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
One more Bucket from our last boat excursion for our late Bucket today...
This one features what’s going on with the local gulls, now in peak nesting time. Chicks are hatching out and those who are parents are extremely busy both defending them at the nesting sites and also fishing to feed them.
The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge.
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Out on the summer Salish Sea —
An interesting couple of gulls in this next picture. The gull in back is a hybrid between a Glaucous-winged — what all the rest of these gulls are, our only year round species — and a Western gull. Western gulls are common on the open coast southward but hybridize so commonly with GWs that they have an informal name: Olympic gulls, after where they are commonly found, the Olympic peninsula. Note its black wingtips rather than grey, and darker back.
The GW gull in photo above is not fully adult. Its wings still have some brown. It won’t be mature and ready to breed until next summer.
Meanwhile, hundreds of adult GWs have packed a nesting island here, which they share with cormorants. Both these ground nesting birds require remote islands to avoid terrestrial predators like mink, raccoons, otters, dogs and people (although otters occasionally swim out). They are still vulnerable to aerial predators like eagles so its a pretty frenzied noisy place at this time of year.
All around the nesting island gulls and other birds keep a sharp lookout for baitballs, a rich source of food.
What’s up in your natural neighborhood today?
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