When I looked through my photos of Alabama birds from my springtime trip to the Gulf Coast, I thought that there was a pretty obvious theme running through most of them: food! After all, birds eat a lot, and their efforts to find food provide birders with plenty of entertainment.
The Bald Eagle that I watched on the Ocean Springs beach may
have been thwarted in its hunting attempts, but this Osprey that I saw the
following day on the Alabama coast clearly hadn’t been. It devoured its prey, a large fish, while
perched in a tall slash pine. In a way,
it was lucky for the Osprey that it found this relatively secure site to enjoy
its meal; Bald Eagles are known to chase after Ospreys and steal their catches. This Osprey did appear slightly wary, but it still clung tightly to the fish
that it had caught, as if it wondered if I
might try to take it.
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Osprey in pine -- warily looking back
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Back to lunching
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Such a gorgeous and impressive bird!
Although large species like Ospreys and Eagles are the most obvious
predatory birds in marshes and on beaches, some much smaller birds also make a
good showing.
Boat-tailed Grackles, the
coastal cousins of the abundant and familiar Common Grackles, are extremely opportunistic,
feeding by preying on invertebrates and other small animals, scavenging dead
creatures along the shore, and nabbing snack food from tourists.
I saw several of these large, glossy grackles
strutting along the beach, mainly near the pier.
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Female Boat-tailed Grackle
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Male Boat-tailed Grackle with food
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Male Boat-tailed Grackle
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Gulls, obviously, are opportunistic, too, although sometimes
this tendency is misdirected.
I spent
several minutes observing a small group of gulls loitering in the drier sand,
away from the waves.
Take a closer look
at the immature Laughing Gull (the one without a dark hood) on the left side of
the following photo.
It was attempting
to eat a wrapper or some other piece of garbage that it had found on the beach.
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Laughing Gulls on the sand
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The Laughing Gull eventually dropped the piece of trash,
which was then picked up by a young Ring-billed Gull.
Notice the pattern?
Immature birds tend to be worse at hunting
than adult birds.
It’s apparently a
skill that they have to gain through experience.
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| Mine! |
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All mine.
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Like the Laughing Gull, the Ring-billed Gull relinquished
its “prey” and moved on.
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| Gak! |
In the flock of Laughing Gulls was a strange and sad sight: a gull
missing part of its foot.
I had seen another
disabled Laughing Gull in the same location a few years before, but that bird was
missing the opposite foot.
Unfortunately, this is probably the indirect result of humans hunting for food on the beach.
Fishing line can get tangled around birds’ feet and cut off the circulation, and I suspect that this is what had happened to the two gulls.
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Injured Laughing Gull
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A different injured Laughing Gull in 2018
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This particular bird didn’t seem to be too perturbed by
its handicap, but I’m sure that foraging was much harder for it as a result of the
injury.
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Preening with that leg would be difficult, too.
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On a lighter note, anyone who has seen my other posts on coastal birds can
probably identify the species in the next photo. The large, brownish, chunky gull on the left
is an immature Herring Gull; the small, brownish birds in the center are
Sanderlings; the two pale gulls to the right of the Sanderlings are Ring-billed
Gulls; and the larger flock of gulls on the right are Laughing Gulls. Happy birding!
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A mix of species on the beach
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Herring Gull
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| Sanderlings |
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Ring-billed Gulls
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Laughing Gulls
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