Tony Angell, on a Feeding Frenzy of Gulls

BirdNote^®

Tony Angell, on a Feeding Frenzy of Gulls

Reading from his book Puget Sound Through an Artist’s Eye

This is BirdNote!
[Surge of waves]
Let’s check in today with author Tony Angell, as he reflects on an event you, too, may have seen:
It was early summer and I looked across the open sea. Its surface gently heaved, suggesting the presence of some great being stirring within. Using binoculars I followed hurried lines of cormorants, guillemots, scoters, and rhinoceros auklets. On a mission, their flight was straight ahead and sure. In the bay below, a gang of a hundred gulls swirled and surged and plunged into a herring ball near the surface.

  [Western Gull then Glaucous-wing Gull and Herring Gulls in a feeding frenzy]

In all likelihood the fish had been herded there by diving auklets and murres or even a school of salmon. I could hear the frenzy in their calls as they competed for the food – and so, apparently, could other gulls, who detoured from their flight- line to join the melee. These cries rang like dinner bells to other gulls.

[Herring Gulls and Glaucous-wing Gulls in a feeding frenzy]

Glaucous-winged, Western, and Herring Gulls, cormorants, guillemots, scoters, and auklets – you can see them all as Tony has drawn and sculpted them, in his book Puget Sound Through an Artist’s Eye. And you can find a link on our website, birdnote.org.
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Call of the bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.  Western Gulls recorded by C.A. Sutherland, Glaucous-winged Gulls recorded by E.S. Booth LNS 3348, and Herring Gulls by Martha Fisher.
Water ambient recorded by C. Peterson Dec05G12T1 1:40. 
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2010 Tune In to Nature.org     June 2020

ID# angellt-gulls-01

http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/ANGPUG.html