{"id":41113,"date":"2016-07-30T06:51:08","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T12:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=41113"},"modified":"2016-07-31T10:47:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T16:47:33","slug":"gulls-brine-flies-spiders-and-robert-kirby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/30\/gulls-brine-flies-spiders-and-robert-kirby\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulls, Brine Flies, Spiders And Robert Kirby"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll confess I don’t pay a lot of attention to gulls but when the brine flies are out\u00a0their feeding antics\u00a0can be both interesting and entertaining.<\/p>\n

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\"california<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

This time of year brine fly numbers on the shore of the Great Salt Lake\u00a0are almost unimaginable. I photographed this\u00a0California Gull five days ago along the causeway to Antelope Island as it took advantage of this enormous Dipteran bounty. The flies\u00a0were so thick that I had difficulties focusing on the bird.<\/p>\n

Different gull species have\u00a0varying feeding strategies. California Gulls walk slowly along the shoreline until they find a spot on the\u00a0sand\/mud where the flies are particularly thick. Then they run headlong through that\u00a0thick patch of flies which scares them a few inches into the air and the gull grabs great gobs of them in its open beak and\u00a0swallows them.\u00a0When the\u00a0uneaten flies settle back down onto the mud…<\/p>\n

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\"california<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

the gull often turns around and runs through them again.<\/p>\n

Eventually the gulls become\u00a0so satiated that they can hardly move. Flying is a lot of work especially when they’re that full so they typically just hang around in the same fly-rich\u00a0area and wait until they can force themselves to do it all over again.<\/p>\n

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\"franklins-gull-3688<\/p>\n

1\/1250, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

But Franklin’s Gulls use a completely different feeding strategy. They just stand in one place (this one looks like it’s running but it isn’t)\u00a0and snag the occasional fly or two out of the air (here you can see several flies in front of its open beak). This method provides less food at a time but it also requires less energy. I’ve never seen this species run after flies.<\/p>\n

The dark masses you see on the ground are brine fly pupae casings. They can be this thick (or thicker) for miles along the shoreline.<\/p>\n

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\"brine<\/p>\n

A few years ago I scooped a handful of them up and photographed them.\u00a0They’re extremely light in weight and great\u00a0rafts of them can often be seen floating out on the lake.<\/p>\n

But birds aren’t the only denizens of Antelope Island to feast on brine flies.<\/p>\n

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\"spider<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 250, Canon 7D Mark II,<\/em> Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc,\u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spiders love them too and Antelope Island is known for enormous numbers of spiders, especially in late July and August. I photographed this Western Spotted Orb Weaver a few days ago but the island also has wolf spiders, cat spiders, jumping spiders and the occasional black widow – and they all feed on brine flies. As you drive the roads on the island you can see their large webs stretched between sagebrush plants, especially near the shore where brine flies and midges\u00a0are thick.<\/p>\n

Antelope Island State Park even holds an annual Spider Fest and coincidentally that festival occurs later today.<\/p>\n

I’ll end with Robert Kirby. Kirby is an ex-cop turned\u00a0newspaper columnist and a beloved local legend because he pokes fun at all of our Utah foibles and sacred cows, including Mormons (he is one and often refers to himself as an “OxyMormon”). His humor is dry and delicious.<\/p>\n

A few days ago Kirby visited the island for a “dry run” of the Spider Fest and then wrote a column about his experience titled “Yes, I Inhaled The Spider<\/a>“. As usual it’s an entertaining read and\u00a0while on the island it sounds like he even discovered a new spider species – the Great Basin Leg-climbing Flesh Ripper!<\/p>\n

I love Kirby! I even met him once years ago\u00a0while we were both doing\u00a0research at the Utah Historical Society. He won’t remember but I do…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

Note: Just two days after publishing this post I saw (and photographed) a Franklin’s Gull using the same fly-feeding technique used by California Gulls – running after the flies to scare them up and then gulping them down. Go figure!<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps Franklin’s Gulls are learning that dandy move from their larger cousins…?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I’ll confess I don’t pay a lot of attention to gulls but when the brine flies are out their feeding antics can be both interesting and entertaining.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41115,"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":[393,4,334,392],"tags":[31,729,492,136,494,160,3050,3049,3048,1331,3047],"class_list":["post-41113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bathing-bird-behaviors","category-bird-behaviors","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","tag-antelope-island-2","tag-brine-flies","tag-california-gull","tag-feeding","tag-franklins-gull","tag-great-salt-lake","tag-mormons","tag-pupae-cases","tag-robert-kirby","tag-salt-lake-tribune","tag-spider-fest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/california-gull-8489-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-aH7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41113","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=41113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}