Lake Erie Gulls

Herring Gulls riding the wind, originally uploaded by Mon@rch.

For lunch last Wednesday I decided to take a little walk to try and photograph some birds. Lake Erie State Park is known as a wonderful migration area for many ducks and songbirds. Could it be possible that I will get skunked and not see any songbirds? Luckily…. I did locate a small flock of Cedar Waxwings and several White Throated Sparrows among the shrubs. But this time I didn’t mind being teased by them keeping their distance with no opportunities for capturing that perfect shot.

I decided to work my way over to the beach in search of a loon or even a raft of ducks along the shores edge. Those Greater Black Backed Gulls on the bluffs are what I seemed to keep my eyes on. Since there were no songbirds around, I decided to wait for these black-backs to take flight. While waiting, I happen to notice this young Herring Gulls found some food and kept dropping it into the water (then picking it back up). It almost appeared as if it was washing its food and trying to get it to a point to quickly swallow. Without delay it flew away and I realized this adult Herring Gulls had approached as if to steal this younger birds lunch.

I continued to watch all these gulls moving up and down this small section of the shore. On occasion one of these birds would quickly drop into the water to picked something up and fly out to a deeper section of the water. This explains why these birds were ignoring me and focusing on their food. Soon my lunch was over and I need to return back to work to finish my day. I did enjoy my limited time watching these birds and of course it didn’t take long to fill up my memory cards.