{"id":150704,"date":"2024-01-19T06:10:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T13:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=150704"},"modified":"2024-01-19T07:08:49","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T14:08:49","slug":"a-hooded-merganser-with-a-fish-and-a-thieving-gull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/19\/a-hooded-merganser-with-a-fish-and-a-thieving-gull\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hooded Merganser With A Fish And A Thieving Gull"},"content":{"rendered":"

I try to avoid applying human standards to birds but sometimes I can’t help myself.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I spent about 40 minutes with as many as six Hooded Mergansers, four males and two females, while they were hunting for prey (mostly small fish as far as I could tell). They were hunting\/fishing as a loose group and they usually had unwelcome company.<\/p>\n

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This Ring-billed Gull followed them everywhere they went and tried to steal their fish whenever they caught one, which was often. Over time I developed a strong dislike for the gull because of its bullying, extremely aggressive behavior.<\/p>\n

One part of me knows that stealing food is a natural behavior for many gulls and I shouldn’t judge it by human standards but eventually that part of me was overshadowed by my developing dislike for the behavior of the gull. By the time the mergansers took off and left the area I couldn’t help but think of the gull as a full-blown villain.<\/p>\n

Following is a series of photos documenting one of the many attacks the gull made on a Hoodie who had just caught a fish. I never had enough depth of field to get both birds sharp so I made it a point to try to keep my active focus point on the gull, the largest of the two birds and the one that would likely be easiest to keep in focus.<\/p>\n

Both birds were sidelit and in this series the fish (a small weather loach) in the merganser’s bill is often hard to see, but it was there from beginning to end.<\/p>\n

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This photo was taken almost immediately after the male Hoodie popped up to the surface with the loach in his bill. You can see how close the gull was from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

The following seven photos are sequential in a burst without any skips.<\/p>\n

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The gull went into attack mode in an instant.<\/p>\n

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The action was fast and furious and I was fairly close to the birds so I had no chance to avoid clipping or cutting off body parts in at least some of my photos.<\/p>\n

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The gull meant business but in the speed and maneuverability departments the gull…<\/p>\n

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was seriously outclassed. The Hoodie put on a burst of speed that the much larger and slower gull had no chance to match. But that didn’t stop it from trying, hard.<\/p>\n

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As they always did in this situation, the merganser dived in his attempt to avoid the gull. Gulls have only a very limited ability to dive below the surface so this strategy can be very effective.<\/p>\n

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The merganser dived almost straight down and he was so incredibly fast I almost…<\/p>\n

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couldn’t keep him in frame as the tip of his tail disappeared below the surface.<\/p>\n

But the thieving gull still wasn’t ready to give up.<\/p>\n

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The water here is very shallow, significantly less than 1′ deep, and the gull knew it so it landed on the water where the Hoodie had disappeared and attempted to find him and make him release the fish. The gull’s attempt failed, the Hoodie popped to the surface far away (sans fish, which he must have swallowed underwater), so the gull eventually gave up.<\/p>\n

Sorry, this photo is soft but I wanted to include the behavior.<\/p>\n

When it comes to stealing food (kleptoparasitism), gulls are nothing if they aren’t persistent. About 20 seconds later this gull attempted to steal a fish from one of the female mergansers.<\/p>\n

I almost cheered when the attempt failed.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: My good friend Jim DeWitt says “It’s really, really hard to like kleptoparasitic behavior. It’s bullying for a living.” I couldn’t agree more, even though I know it’s applying human standards to birds.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I try to avoid applying human standards to birds but sometimes I can’t help myself. (10 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,392,394,4407],"tags":[7299,7298,141,7296,3206,1430,3207,2719,311,7297,320],"class_list":["post-150704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-hooded-mergansers-waterfowl","tag-bullying-behavior","tag-can-gulls-dive","tag-fish","tag-gulls-stealing-food","tag-hooded-merganser","tag-kleptoparasitism","tag-lophodytes-cucullatus","tag-ring-billed-gull","tag-utah-2","tag-villainous-behavior","tag-weather-loach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/hooded-merganser-1934-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-DcI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150704"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150763,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150704\/revisions\/150763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}