January 25

January 25, 2008 by OrientSee.

Somebody has set up a rough feeder out in the thicket. The chickadees were in and out. A quick shot of one just leaving with a large seed in his beak.

There was a group of gulls whirling around over the flat grass of the marsh. They were wheeling and swooping. I got to the boardwalk and finally understood what was going on. There was shell litter on the frozen ice surface. The gulls were shell busting. A gull will find a mussel and then drop it so that the shell will crack and then they can eat it. The group must have found a good mussel bed to feed from because there was quite a group dropping shells while others were busy stealing from the first group. Quite suddenly it all stopped. I looked up and saw that a Red-tail Hawk was soaring above watching all the activity. The gulls immediately stopped their antics and settled down in the grass. The hawk drifted on and the gulls started up again. It was all great fun to watch.

Ciao!

-Jorge

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