(Not) Another boring encounter with a sea bird
I had a little encounter yesterday that made me smile like a toothy grinning little child having just dug up treasure.
My house mate and I were invited to lunch and we decided to stop along the beach before hand. He knows that I like taking photos so of course I had all my gear already packed and ready. We parked and walked along the shore talking nonsense while admiring the view and I was looking for little points of interest amongst the flotsam and jetsam to photograph. There were a few that I snapped and then I saw a sea bird in the near distance.
I generally don't take these kinds of photos because once you've seen a seagull, you've seen a seagull right? We'll see.
We continued walking and as we came closer to the bird and it seemed unperturbed, I took another photo as it filled more of the frame. Better.
Not thinking too much about this bird and assuming it would fly off, I continued the conversation with my friend while watching the bird somewhat absent mindedly. I then saw it pick something up and I assumed it had found some sort of sea creature washed up on the beach that it was trying to eat.
Then it dropped it.
Then it picked it up and walked in the other direction with a spring in it's step. I missed the opportunity to get a photo of it with the thing in it's mouth.
Then it dropped it again and I took another photo. Something in my mind was watching this behaviour and going "look closer". So I replayed the image on the viewfinder screen and zoomed in to see what this bird was doing. Look at the expression on it's face trying to work out what this weird toy was that it had found!
I laughed out loud and exclaimed "Do you know what it found?"
"No, what is it?"
"A marble!"
Now I wanted to watch this bird and take more photos because, well, it's not every day you see a gull with a marble in it's beak. The game continued with the bird who I've named Darwin dropping it and picking it up, carrying it this way and that until after a few minutes, it lost interest and walked out into the surf.
I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to get a nice photo of the marble in the sand. Against the backdrop of my house mate asking "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to photograph the marble"
...
"Are you serious? What the ???" - bemused silence - and then "hahahahah, you nutter!"
Sometimes you just have to take the punch to get the photo. I watched the little marble swirl around in the water and took another shot.
I got up and with a massive smile on my face, I plucked the little treasure from the sand and placed it in my pocket. I only noticed that the swirl in the glass in this last photo looks just like a little sailboat in post processing. So cool.
My housemate, still chuckling to himself asked if he could borrow the camera and exclaimed
"You do what you have to for your art" and captured this...
TOTALLY WORTH IT!
When I was a kid I learned seagulls liked Hot Wheels toy cars. For several years I hated seagulls for that reason.
Really? How many of them did they steal?
Mine, mine, mine Lol the fuckers!
Now I am going to have to buy a small car to take to a beach and see if a seagull gets inquisitive. I had no idea that they were so playful.
They'd just come mess up my "parking lot." Wouldn't steal them, just carry them away, drop them. Lost a couple of course but we also had a metal detector so it wasn't the end of the world. I think they just like shiny. I found out later in life they love beer bottle caps.
Well, who doesn't like Hot Wheels right? Must have actually been fun finding them again with a metal detector. Did you find anything else shiny while searching for the little trucks?
I'm going to have to get some little cars and try to see if I can evoke the same kind of inquisitive nature with other birds now, just for the sheer fuck of it.
This beach is in front of the cabin so there's not much to find. Very little human activity there aside from my family. Mainly used it to find the boat anchor and chain since it would always get covered in sand. Found a Bic lighter once! Still worked.
I think the seagulls get confused and associate shiny with minnows, thinking it's food. They're scavengers so they'll test everything.
Ah ok, well a Bic lighter is still a cool find 😁
Minnows - yes that makes sense, probably also why so many of them end up getting fish hooks in their beaks.
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I LOVE it! At least it knew to give up and move on to something "better."
Hi @greensandpinks
Thanks so much for having a read, it was such an odd (but fun) encounter. I could see how intrigued the gull was with it's new toy but eventually it decided it wasn't edible. I couldn't leave the marble there, it was just too special.