{"id":161726,"date":"2024-07-14T05:56:19","date_gmt":"2024-07-14T11:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=161726"},"modified":"2024-07-14T06:15:40","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T12:15:40","slug":"gulls-bucket-mouthing-brine-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/14\/gulls-bucket-mouthing-brine-flies\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulls ‘Bucket-mouthing’ Brine Flies"},"content":{"rendered":"

An amusing and highly effective feeding technique.<\/p>\n

For the last few years our drought and shrinking Great Salt Lake have greatly reduced the number of brine flies along the shores of the lake, so it’s been a while since I’ve been able to observe this fun and very efficient gull feeding behavior. But this year water levels have risen, brine flies have returned and the gulls are at it again.<\/p>\n

Two days ago along the Antelope Island Causeway I was able to document it with photos.<\/p>\n

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This Franklin’s Gull was one of its more effective practitioners. Those darker colored bands along the shore are composed of unimaginable numbers of brine flies. When predators aren’t actively feeding on them the flies mostly stay on the sand near the water, as you see here.<\/p>\n

The gull had a feather stuck to its bill and that feather stayed stuck for almost the entire time I was with the bird. It can be seen in some of my photos and in other photos it can’t.<\/p>\n

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The gull would face one direction along the length of the shore and then begin running, which scared up brine flies in huge numbers in front of ‘him’. Most flies only rise a few inches above the sand so when the gull would lower his head, most of the flies would be…<\/p>\n

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just about at mouth level. As he ran through the clouds of flies with his beak open, he was able to…<\/p>\n

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scoop up large numbers of flies with each running step. I think of this feeding technique as “bucket-mouthing”. You can call it what you like.<\/p>\n

Several gulls of different species had a patch of shore staked out so when this guy would reach the end of his hunting patch he would…<\/p>\n

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turn around and run the other way, scooping up flies as he ran.<\/p>\n

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This California Gull (I believe) had the hunting patch immediately to the west and this bird was using the same technique to great effect.<\/p>\n

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This Willet had the hunting patch immediately to the east of the Franklin’s Gull. Willets have apparently never learned this hunting technique (bill gape too narrow for it to be effective?) but this bird was obviously watching the gulls and seemed to be trying to figure out how it’s done. I watched as the Willet ran back and forth through the flies several times but as far as I could tell it never lowered its head or opened its bill in an attempt to scoop up flies as it ran.<\/p>\n

Maybe this bird just got a kick out of scaring up flies. I know I’ve done the same thing, for that very reason.<\/p>\n

Over the years I’ve only seen gulls “bucket-mouthing” brine flies as they ran through them. Most other birds pick them off individually, as the flies are in flight or on the shore or floating on the water.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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

An amusing and highly effective feeding technique. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161729,"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":[3,334,5253,392,343],"tags":[7533,492,494,160,7534,1315,311,327],"class_list":["post-161726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-antelope-island","category-birds","category-california-gulls","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-willets","tag-bucket-mouthing-brine-flies","tag-california-gull","tag-franklins-gull","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-hunting-brine-flies","tag-hunting-technique","tag-utah-2","tag-willet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/franklins-gull-7375-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-G4u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161726","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=161726"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161758,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161726\/revisions\/161758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}